The Eyes & The Impossible

Like with Simon Sort of Says by Erin Bow, this book skyrocketed up by TBR pile because of all the pre-Newbery Newbery buzz it was getting on the blogs. I recognized the author, obviously, as a heavy-hitter in adult fiction, so was surprised to see a juvenile fiction book! Upon further reflection though, and I did genuinely enjoy the book in many ways, I’m not sure if this really WAS a juvenile fiction book, you know? It easily could be marketed to adults, and nothing about it struck me as particularly “juvenile” other than the fact that maybe kids are more used to animal-based stories than adults? This feels like a short story that got turned into a book, and that’s fine—I just don’t know what children I would really give this to. I think it’d be an easier sell to adults, honestly.

Okay, back to the story—-this is a 200+ page prose novel for “kids” about Johannes, a free dog who lives in a park, a sort of NPS meets nature reserve situation, and he’s very important, because he is the “eyes” and he is super fast and runs around looking at things and reporting back to the bison and the other animals that help keep the equilibrium. He reports when there’s weird human stuff going on, where there’s an issue with fencing, etc. He meets some goats that are new to the area, and that’s when he hatches a big plan to help the bison be free. It involves using a lot of smarts, coordinating multiple animal groups, a fair bit of hope, and discovering who Johannes truly is. Spoiler: it’s not JUST a dog, you know what I mean? I mean..of course you do, if you look at the cover, lol.

A note on the art—I loved discovering at the end that all of them are famous/semi-famous real landscape paintings, with Johannes, the protagonist added in to it. So cool and such a fun little trick.

Anyway–overall, I found this a strong story. Delineation of environment is great, Johannes’ voice is unique and vibrant, and yet I still couldn’t shake that this didn’t feel like it was ever actually intended for children. Line to line it’s beautiful, there were moments were I teared up….but something felt off as I closed the cover.

Have you read The Eyes & The Impossible? What do you think?