The Eyes and the Impossible

So overall, I found this to be a fun little read. One of my kids read it for book club and wanted me to read it, so here we are!

The author's note in the beginning irked me a little bit, because why is there a need to express that your animal story is not like other ones because your animals are not stand-ins for humans? The dog doesn't ever reference using his sense of smell, knows what rectangles are, knows what all the animals are called that he interacts with, and knows what tourist means. I don't have an issue with that, but when you knock on other books for using animals as stand-ins, I feel you should put more effort into it. This is a kid's book, there's no need for it.

Overall, though, I did enjoy the story. The animals have all formed a community around each other to keep everyone apprised of changes to their park and to keep everyone safe. They're living their lives assuming the park is all there is and never leaving even to see where the humans go when they leave. That is, until some goats come to the park and blow their world open.

I was quite surprised at the turns that happen and was not really expecting the ending. I can totally see why this was picked for a book club read and why my daughter enjoyed it so much. But I had a hard time not nitpicking little things after that author's note. It had really good community vibes (unless you were a duck) and all the animals care for each other, and I did have to chuckle a bit through the book. It's one that I would say kids would definitely enjoy, but adults may have a bit of a harder time with just overthinking it.

I don't trust human authors who say that in contrast to other animal stories, the animals in their story are just animals, not stand-ins for humans. Especially if this story is then about a dog and rarely even mentions smell as a way of knowing what is going on in the world. Sure, this dog's job is seeing, and smell is mentioned some times, but there were a few scenes where I was very confused why the dog had to go closer to see something, when he should have smelled it much earlier imo. I live with cats, and their sense of smell is not as good as that of dogs, but even they do magic shit like simply knowing which one is the belly rub carpet, months after the last cat lived there, who liked this carpet for belly rubs. Also, I think the life of a trash eating park dog is maybe painted as more fun than it actually is. I know happy calm healthy street dogs exist, but got the impression that's mostly ones that are cared for by humans. And since there's no mention of this dog hunting, I have to assume trash is his only food source.

That aside, I really liked this story. Johannes is a free dog living in a park and part of a big community of squirrels, sea gulls, bison, turtles, raccoons etc (but not ducks, nobody likes the ducks). He appreciates art so much that he gets captured once while entranced by a painting. But the others rescue him. That's just how it works. A bunch of stuff happens, and they always deal with it. And it's by far not as predictable as I thought halfway through.

What I like most is that animals count and estimate numbers, but are really bad at it. That feels very relatable.

This was delightful, and Ethan Hawke's audiobook narration had me laughing out loud through the whole book, which is largely about friends supporting each other. It touched on so many things, like the wonder of art, the joy of adventure, and the great variety of personalities that you will meet in life.