The Eyes & The Impossible

In stark contrast to Mexikid, the title of this year's medal winner gave nothing away. And for the first couple chapters, even the text had me completely baffled. A dog's first-person account of being "the Eyes"? What does that even mean? And why has he been alive for hundreds of years? And why is he faster than the speed of sound? And THEN this completely unique and fresh tale of a dog who is an unabashed braggart and also ridiculously bad at telling time unfolds. 

This book is totally magic in the most unexpected way. I laughed out loud pretty much any time Johannes (the dog telling the tale) talks about running or ducks. I wept openly during Bertrand's (his best friend who is a seagull) coda. I relished Johannes' descriptions of familiar and unfamiliar things. 

One of my favorite brag passages:

I began. I took the earth under me and sent it into the past.  I did it again and again, taking the future and tossing it backward, and soon my eyes were glassy with cold speed and I was flying. I broke the speed of foxes and rabbits and kept going. I entered the speed of sound and broke it like a cheap toy. When I was flying across the picnic fields and could see the windmill and could smell the salty ocean, I became light itself. 

 And this one:

And then we'd create a distraction. Yes! When I thought of the distraction I laughed a little, because it was such a good idea that I loved my brain for thinking of it. Yes, a distraction.

 How does someone even come up with an idea for a story like this?

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