The Eleventh Hour: A Curious Mystery, Graeme Base

The Eleventh Hour: A Curious Mystery, Graeme Base

ISBN : 0810908514

Read August 10, 2013

 

Oh what fun.  I've loved Animalia since I was a child, and The Water Hole is beautiful and somewhat haunting, but I have somehow missed this one.  I'm not one for long hard puzzles, and since this was a library book, of course the "solutions" pages in the back (really more a set of directions as to where to find and how to begin solving the codes involved) were already opened, but I was glad to see my suspicions were on the right track.  All I'll say is that "Mr Roboto" by Styx is a great song, and it's never led me wrong before, and that I'm a big fan of Hide and Seek and Find.  Also, the Swan's name?  I DID figure that bit out on my own: it's an easy puzzle, in the cards.  If you're not in the mood for a mystery, the story and pictures are intricate and easy to get lost in regardless, and if/when you do solve the mystery, you'll "unlock" a seek-and-find quest that opens up afterwards to keep the fun going for another good while. 

 

Similar to Kit Williams' Masquerade (still beautiful, even after the prize is long since gone) and "Book Without A Name" (ISBN: 978-0394538174) which I love partly because it features bees and I've always been fascinated by them, and partly because the solution/prize has more to do with the book itself: the book's name.  That way the prize can be "found" again and again by new readers, and it's personal to them - even though in both cases the actual reward/treasure already been rewarded many years ago by the author/illustrator.  

 

The Eleventh Hour is actually preferable to Kit William's work, because in my opinion, the "reward" comes in the enjoyment of the book and the intellectual high of solving the puzzle.  Science has borne me out in that, actually.  If you attach rewards to activities that were previously enjoyable on their own, they become less enjoyable afterwards, even if the reward stays, and especially if the reward goes away again.  Base knows this, and he wisely makes the adventure and the read and the puzzle its own reward, all intrinsic to the book.