What Do You See?

A Conversation in Pictures

By Barney Saltzberg

Photography by Jamie Lee Curtis

​

Junior Library Guild Selection

​

“A real charmer, with originality and warmth.”

— B.J. Novak

 

“What Do You See? delights as it inspires us to see theextraordinary in the ordinary, the beautiful in the different.”

— R.J. Palacio

 

“Jamie Lee Curtis’s minimalistic photos are the perfect jumping offpoint for Barney Saltzberg’s inner, delighted child who amazes with hisvivid imagination. Children will surely want to engage with thisvisual dialogue and create their own zany conversations.”

— Barbara Bottner

 

“Imaginative, endearing, engaging, and sweet. What do I see?A fun, beautiful story connecting art and friendship.”

— Lisa McMann, New York Times bestselling author of The Unwanteds series

​

"Two friends mount an ongoing creativity challenge in this collaborative picture book. When “she” takes a photograph of something ordinary that seems ripe with imaginative possibilities, “he” adds economically applied—and often comically inspired—lines and color, turning the photo’s subject into something new, shown in pages that picture the photographs and drawings but never the friends. “She saw a friendly seagull carrying the world on its shoulders,” reads the text on one verso page, accompanied by a photo of a plump, stolid-looking bird. “He saw a friendly monster who had no worries at all” is the recto response, which accompanies an image of the gull’s body transformed into the head of a grinning creature with snaggly teeth. While the varied visuals offer craft-time fun, it’s the friends’ interplay—and how they concur and diverge in their ideas—that makes the concept feel fresh. Even when pals are miles apart in what they see, Saltzberg (We’re All in the Same Boat) and Curtis (Me, Myselfie & I) seem to say, they can appreciate, be tickled by, and connect via a new perspective: “He loved what she saw.... She loved what he would draw.” Back matter invites readers to engage in similar activities. Ages 5–10. (Mar.)"

— Publishers Weekly