EXTRAORDINARY EYEGLASSES

This Swiss import offers readers the inside scoop on glasses, from their history to how they’re manufactured today.

Rightly recognizing that younger readers will find their expansive take on the topic something of a grind, Stevan and Vigneault tuck episodes of a wordless comic featuring a child with superpowered spectacles and other tangential diversions into the discourse. In between, following a well-illustrated timeline that takes the story of specs from premodern pieces of rock crystal to Ben Franklin’s bifocals and the first contact lenses, the book flits from eye anatomy to myopia and other common malfunctions, what a visit to an ophthalmologist is like, proper care of frames and lenses, optical instruments such as telescopes and magnifying glasses, examples of “spectacled” animals, and optical illusions. Stevan also glances briefly at smart glasses and even offers some comfort to those who have been teased for wearing glasses. A brief glossary lists cognates for eyeglasses in Yoruba and other languages, and in the cartoon illustrations, a racially diverse cast that includes blind and wheelchair-using members model eyeglasses of many styles. A misleading claim that eyes only come in “black, green, brown, blue, or beige” and a confusing one in the discussion of diopters designating excellent eyesight as “10/10” rather than the more common (in the United States, anyway) “20/20” may be translation issues; in general the infodump is solid enough, if not very deep.

An informative, if patchwork, mishmash.