I Spy School Days: A Retrospective
6/22/2023:
I Spy School Days takes the kindergarten themes from the original I Spy and focuses them, using improved photo techniques to create a greater variety of scenes. Instead of prioritizing the atmospheric qualities of the scenes from its predecessors, School Days focuses on creating a collection of colorful scenes that the elementary schoolers reading this book will be inspired to replicate. Though I will always value the more atmospheric I Spy books more, School Days is still interesting and worth talking about.
A Is for...
This is a fun, cute image that sets the tone of the first half of School Days. Unfortunately, that means a lot of relatively plain scenes on white backdrops.
I still like this scene, though! I find that the subject matter is really fun. I love how each letter has a pattern representing a word that starts with that letter. The patterns have variety too, they’re not all just painted on, such as the eraser for the E having been used nearby, and the rocks on the R flaking off a little. I also like how all of the props next to each letter also start with that letter. It’s a simple concept, but it’s cute and well-executed. It’s not the kind of scene that you can really get drawn into, but it’s just fun.
Chalkboard Fun
This scene is alright. I understand that chalkboards are an iconic part of the elementary school experience, but I never went to schools that had chalkboards until highschool, so the imagery of them always felt kind of dated.
The most notable aspect of this scene is its rhyme. There’s a lot more words you have to look for, and a few interesting and unusual things to find, like “a rhyming snake”, “an unfinished word,” and “JUAN three times.” Otherwise… I’m really struggling to find things to say about this scene.
Nature Up Close
This scene is another take on Nature, from the first book, but I feel like this one works a lot better. Instead of just focusing on leaves and tree bark, the scene has a much wider range of natural objects, with flowers, rocks, insects, bits of bark, seeds, mushrooms, and more. The range of colors makes this scene stand out from the usual primary-colored toys seen on most other white-background scenes in I Spy.
I really like the ruler at the bottom of the frame, it really helps give a sense of the scale of this scene. It feels like a giant macro photo, letting you look way up close at natural objects at 1:1 size. It’s a well-made scene!
Patterns and Paint
Woooahh… this scene is dazzling and busy. The set of a plain white backdrop with primary-colored props is pretty standard, but the patterned props are distinct and help this image stand out. This one actually ties into a highly specific memory of mine. I remember that, in first grade, there was a huge emphasis on recognizing and replicating patterns. The triangular tiles in the upper-left specifically remind me of the kind of manipulatives we had.
I like how there’s a range of interesting and colorful props made out of the same materials, showing lots of different ways of making patterned objects. The folded paper cut-outs, the painted cardboard tiles, and the sponge stamps all make fun patterns that add a nice consistency to the photo. This scene is alright. It’s got a solid aesthetic, but is otherwise pretty standard.
Levers, Ramps, and Pulleys
This is the most iconic scene in the book! The color palette and subject matter evokes Blocks from the first book, but the way it’s constructed could not be more different. The scene has plenty of depth, with a slightly diagonal camera angle that makes the whole structure crystal clear.
The real star of the show is the Rube-Goldberg-esque balloon popping machine itself. I love how the usual meandering flow of I Spy photos is guided by the process of the machine, its path snaking cleanly around the page, always clear and visible. I love how lots of other little objects are scattered around, as if they were considered for the machine but didn’t quite work out. I also really love the little chalkboard in the lower-right corner, showing how many times the machine has been tested. Jean Marzollo suggested this, as she mentioned on her website, so that children would not be disappointed when their own machines in this style didn’t quite work every time.
This scene evokes highly specific memories in me. When I was about 7 or 8, I would make machines just like this one with a friend of mine, crossing the whole floor of the living room, instead of snaking back and forth in a compact space. The goal was never to make a machine that did something, just to create satisfying motion across the room out of things we just had lying around. I am certain this experience was not only my own, as I find this image to be particularly inspirational and compelling.
And in case you were wondering, it works.
Old-Fashioned School
What a warm, cozy scene! I love the color palette in this one, it’s earthy and warm and weathered, but has just enough splashes of colors that stop it from feeling monotone. This scene reminds me of Toys in the Attic from the first book, and The Toy Box Solution from Mystery, it’s another take on the “old toys” scene type but with a school focus, and I think it’s nice. There’s not that much to say about it, but I think it’s a pleasant scene.
Be My Valentine
This is an odd scene. I love the perspective, the towering mailbox above the table covered with paper cutouts gives a lot of depth and helps add more scale to the scene. The color palette is also quite distinct, all pinks and purples and reds, which stands out a lot from the mostly primary-colored scenes in the rest of the book.
The riddle has some fun things in it too. Asking to find a specific, “five button heart” is fun, since there are so many other hearts in the scene. I also quite like the subgame at the end, where the riddle asks you to find “a card that is in the wrong box.” It’s quite unique and works well for this set. I like this one!
The Playground
Finally, a more atmospheric scene! I love how minimalist and distinctive this one is. Instead of being a standard scene with objects scattered about, all you see at the start is the lone kickball with the deep shadow, only seeing more things as you look around and look closer.
I love the vibe here. Instead of being a busy playground with lots of things scattered about, it feels like recess is over and everything was just left behind, the serene quiet of the school yard after the kids have long since gone back inside. The lighting is especially strong. The shadow of trees overhead helps add more depth and realism to this scene.
Stegosaurus
This is one impressive diorama! I love how it is clearly made of papier-mache and cardboard. This scene is the one that led me to realize that almost all of the scenes in School Days are easily replicable activities for elementary schoolers, which finally allowed me to appreciate this book for its own merits.
Dioramas like this, made out of colored objects, are especially fun, since you can make something with a pretty nice scale just out of paper and paint. There’s also quite a lot of depth to this scene, created with the big diorama itself and its multiple layers, with the background, soil layers, trees, and of course, the Stegosaurus itself.
I like all the miscellaneous other objects that add more texture. The toy dinosaurs are an especially cute touch, like the teacher asked each kid to bring something related to their collective project from home. I especially love the little notes from the kids on the sides. The writing on them is blunt to the point of comedy, and is incredibly relatable. I absolutely wrote like that when I was in second grade.
This is an adorable, well-made scene. Each element of it works together to create a much greater whole.
Mapping
This scene evokes so many memories from me, more than any other scene in the book. I want to talk about the composition first, though. I really love the camera angle, the slightly overhead perspective helps it feel like a model cityscape, like the town itself could continue on past the edges of the frame. I love all the little details and scenes happening within the image as well, the wedding in front of an abstract facsimile of a church, a helicopter on a helipad marked with a circle, and the way specific little buildings are given names with signs on popsicle sticks, so as to not mark the blocks. It really does feel like a lively little city.
As a child, I was absolutely obsessed with maps. When I was done with my school work, I would work on an ongoing series of maps, charting out a big fantasy world I had created in my head. In fourth grade, when we had a whole unit on how to make and read maps, I was super into it. It still stands out as a highlight of elementary school for me. This feels like a similar kind of activity, to teach how to make and read maps.
The strongest memory evoked by this scene, though, is of Animal Town. It would take a long, long time for me to fully explain what Animal Town was. In summary, though, it was my first project, and was essentially an ongoing RP world that I created, using all my different toys, where all my friends had different animal characters and would go on adventures and do stuff and have houses and items and such. It was very strongly inspired by Neopets, Pokemon, and whatever else I was into at various points. It lasted for years and years and years, and that experience of running a game like that has still influenced how I do things in my own life. I’ve never been a player, always a game master.
The thing that strikes me the most about this scene is how much it uncannily resembles Animal Town. The buildings constructed from blocks, the flat green backdrop with a river (Animal Town was more pastoral, so it was all fields and water), the buildings and places and people with names and activities… if all of the humans in the scene were replaced with animals, the resemblance would be almost perfect. I love this scene uncontrollably, from the deep, strong memories it evokes from me.
Storybook Theater
This scene is really charming. I remember doing a lot with fairy tales in elementary school, and this feels like exactly the kind of activity we would do. We even made puppets for them in art class, though they were hand puppets instead of popsicle stick puppets. I like how the blue backdrop on the theater box contrasts very well with all the fairy tale imagery pasted onto it.
The details in the background stand out to me the most, though. The scenes pictured off the sides of the little theater box have an earthy palette, since they’re made out of figures and things other than paper cutouts. On the right, you can see the mermaid from Fantasy, as well. It’s a nice detail that fits the fairy tale theme well.
I have to mention the rhyme, since it asks you to find “Anansi the Spider.” I distinctly remember a trend when I was in school, of teaching about fairy tales/fables/stories from all over the world, and this feels like that trend in action. I think it’s a really nice detail in this scene full of nice details. This one is great.
Sorting and Classifying
This might just be one of the best executed “props on a white background” scenes in the entire series. There’s just something absolutely satisfying about things sorted into different categories with hoops, even overlapping them to create venn diagrams with objects that fit both categories. The sub-game at the end of the riddle even has you look at the extra objects that aren’t in the hoops, and find where they should go. It’s fun and unique gameplay for the series, and I like it!
I find the asymmetry in this scene really satisfying, it helps keep your eye moving around. The flat lighting also really helps the colors pop on each individual item. This scene is simple, but highly effective.
1, 2, 3...
I Spy School Days ends on an echo of the first scene with this one. Instead of the letters of the alphabet, this scene groups things by numbers, using the familiar box-based structure seen in scenes like Cubbies. I like it! I think it’s neat how each object fits into each box for a different reason. The color palette is still focused on primary colors, but I think it works better here, since the background is colored as well, so it stands out from the other scenes on plain white backdrops. This is a good, cute note to end this book on.
Conclusion
I Spy School Days is an interesting installment in the series. I had a lot of trouble writing about this one at the start, the book opens on a kind of plain note, but as it went on, the book’s true nature as a set of activities became clear to me, and I came to appreciate it a lot more. As the compositions in this series get more advanced and evocative, they also become increasingly distant, far past the capabilities of children who would be reading the books for the first time. I think it’s important for I Spy to have a balance of those two aspects, evocative quality and replicability, which it usually does highly effectively, by making impressive scenes out of common household objects and toys.
School Days is good! What it lacks in atmosphere, it makes up for with a set of easily replicable activities that has inspired children to create similar things, and learn from that experience.