Oops? OOPS? I'll give you oops! I'll give you OOGLY-BOOGLY!

I know I'm not in the habit of reviewing picture books, but as any of my siblings could tell you, The Wizard of Op is special. Between the six of us, we checked this book out of the Contra Costa Library system too many times to count, mesmerized by the magic spells contained in its pages.

Once upon a time, a young and careless prince is playing a game of croquet when he makes the mistake of bonking a surly witch with a stray croquet ball. The witch, being a witch (and now having a sizable lump on the back of her head), promptly turns the poor lad into a frog. After getting the royal fair young maiden to kiss him (to no avail) and suffering through numerous useless "cures" of other court wizards, the prince finally turns to the Wizard of Op, a bumbling mage with a knack for visual spells—only he doesn't have the slightest idea what the spells actually do. So begins the arduous process of using the poor prince (and, by extension, the reader) as a guinea pig for each successive optical spell.

The Wizard of Op is two books in one—a delightful children's story and a prime example of optical art. Emberley's drawings are deceptively simple—as he put it himself, made with Plain Black Ink on Plain White Paper—but the optical art creates the illusion of movement, color, swirls and showers. It's a joy to look at—and unlike those annoying Magic Eye posters, you don't have to stare cross-eyed at the pages to catch the wizard's optical magic. Despite the fun of this little book, it went through only one printing in the mid-1970s and is now quite difficult to find (and expensive to purchase). It's about time the publishing world gave the late Mr. Emberley his due and reprinted this small classic.

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