The Eyes and the Impossible: (Newbery Medal Winner)

[4.25] I’ve had an affinity for animal fiction since I was a pre-teen and fell in love with ”Charlotte’s Web” and “The Cricket in Times Square.” So it was no surprise that I found Eggers’ adventure utterly delightful. The characters were enchanting and oftentimes hilarious. The

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writing was solid. The plot — while a bit predictable and perhaps even cliche in spots — had enough twists to keep the narrative moving at a nice pace. Eggers explores numerous themes, including friendship, freedom and bias without becoming preachy or heavy-handed. I highly recommend “The Eyes & the Impossible” to animal aficionados of all ages.

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Johannes is a free dog in a park, where he is the Eyes for the Bison. He travels around at the speed of light, observing everything and with his friends the Assistant Eyes - including a squirrel, raccoons, and a gull - allowing the Bisons, who are stuck in their pen, to keep the Equilibrium in the

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park, despite the human workers. Changes are afoot when a museum is put up, and when Johannes is nearly captured, he suddenly has a brilliant idea: he should free the Bison!

I am in the minority here, but I just did not see why everyone seems to love this book. Johannes is fine as our narrator and I can tell that Eggers takes care to make him sound very dog-like ("I turn I turn I turn before I lie to sleep and I rise before the Sun. I sleep inside and sleep outside and have slept in the hollow of a thousand-year-old tree" are the opening sentences), but I found it hard to read for the same reason. We are told at the beginning that the animals do not symbolize humans, but then there are little side-stories with goats who treat another one differently because of the look of her horns. And I couldn't help wondering if Johannes shouldn't be the Nose, since dogs experience so much through that sense. Illustrator Shawn Harris has taken classical landscapes from the 1800s and added Johannes seamlessly to them. I may have, honestly, liked it better as a child when I was reading all I could by Thornton W. Burgess and enjoyed animal-main-character stories. But as an adult, it had interesting elements, but never really came together cohesively for me.

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This 2024 Newbery-award-winner tells the story of a dog who is friends with bison, a seagull, and other creatures in an island park. I’ve recently read two others from the POV of an animal (Pax and Open Throat), but I loved how this one leaned heavy on a buddy comedy vibe, working in a heist and

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a deep, abiding friendship between the animals. I liked it much more than I thought I would and the audio, performed by Ethan Hawk) was such fun.

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This year’s newbery medal winner. I barely made it through. The main characters are animals (a dog is the narrator), and normally I would NOPE that after the first page, but since I have read *all* of the Newberys I felt obligated to continue. And of course there’s animal abuse. Ugh. Also,

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Eggers commits the literary since of winking just a little too hard at his own cleverness. This one firmly goes in the Newbery Duds column for me.

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Wow. This book is endlessly beautiful. It filled my heart. There are no wasted words. I won't try to explain it or describe it, I will just let the feeling of it sit within me. This book is a big feeling. Read it. Feel it. Share it.

Delightful story full of heart and subtle humor. Not "Charlotte's Web"-level sentiment, but touching, still.