The Magic Eye, Volume Ii

Rating:
Summary: Through the Magic Eye Poster
Review: Looking through a magic window into a kingdom full of imaginary beings stirs something very deep in the human imagination. If Lewis Carroll had seen stereograms, he would have written a sequel to 'Alice in Wonderland' entitled 'Through the Magic Eye Poster'! Published in 1993 by Andrews and McMeel. The second straight best-seller, at one time both Magic Eye I and Magic Eye II were at the top of the New York Times list. Sequel to the original New York Times best-seller, and the book that kicked off the stereogram craze of the 1990's. Millions of copies of this book have been sold.

Rating:
Summary: Entertaining, but doesn't have lasting power.
Review: This book contains 25 pictures, two of which are three-dimensional patterns. The remaining 23 pictures appear to be just colorful patterns to the untrained eye (as it appears on the cover), but when seen properly, three-dimensional shapes zoom out of the colorful pages.
[Note: The objects are three-dimensional, but only as a paper diorama appears to be 3-D. They are flat subjects in front of a background, not fully fleshed out scenes and characters. The objects also appear with the same color and texture pattern as the background.]
Some of the shapes appearing in this book are The Sphinx, dinosaurs, ballerinas, a unicorn, and The Statue of Liberty. One scene stretches over two pages. There are 3 additional pictures, one appearing on the front cover of the book, and one on the inside front cover and another inside the back cover of the book.

In the beginning of the book, there is a foreword which contains information on how the illusion works for specific pictures within the book. The next page gives instructions and techniques on viewing the 3-D objects. There is a "cheat" section in the back of the book, which shows how each of the pictures should appear.

This book was really popular in the mid-90s, and is therefore pretty dated. It is comparable to the fun of blacklight posters, and lava lamps in the 70s. We will probably look back at this book as a piece of 90s trends or gimmicks.

Magic Eye II holds no real educational value, and is meant purely for fun. It is entertaining for the first couple of times, but most likely it will sit on your shelf after that. It would probably be best suited as a coffee table book.

Rating:
Summary: Keep looking;you'll find it....
Review: This book has been around since 1994 and is still a lot of fun.These 3-D images seem to have reached their peak in the early 90's ;as far as I know anyway.I particularly enjoyed the Forward.Tom Baccei talks about their resident wizard."Some say that although his bulb seems good,his filament is short a few twists." In the words of Wizzy "Life is like a single beautiful butterfly in a gentle swirling snowstorm.When you find your own center,you'll find the butterfly.Then you can hop on and go on a ride forever."
When you've found all the 3-D images,try looking for that butterfly in the snowstorm and enjoy life.

Rating:
Summary: A nice follow-up to volume 1
Review: Your third-eye will continue to be pleaesd by this new edition of the Magic Eye series. In some ways, the images in this volume are more subtle than the first. This will mean a little more time in trying to decipher the pictures with your eyes.

Some of the images, I believe, are slightly off registration. This would account for some of the difficulty in seeing the images more clearly. In spite of this, the book is another fun addition to seeing in 3-D.