Picture books · Ages 4 to 8 · English and Spanish
The other side of the story is on the other side of the book.
Read a Bob & Otto book front to back and it's Bob's story. Turn it over and read the same pages back — the same words, the same pictures — and it's Otto's. Five small misunderstandings between two best friends, and how each one comes apart.
Five books · Paperback and Kindle · Made by VEN Method
Why these books exist
Most books about seeing the other side tell a child to do it. These books show it.
Forward, you are inside Bob's head: what he heard, what he decided, why he walked off. Turn the book over and you are inside Otto's — the same words, a different story. Nobody was wrong. Nobody asked.
That is the one habit the books practice: before you decide what someone meant, ask how they heard it. Then you don't carry home a bad feeling you never needed.
They come from VEN Method, a social-emotional learning company that builds connection and community in classrooms and at home. The books are the same idea for the youngest readers — on paper, with a grown-up.
- About a hundred words each way. Short enough for bedtime. Twice.
- The last page is the first page. Every book opens and closes on the same line, so one boy's ending is the other's beginning.
- Find the sparrow. It sits on every one of Otto's pages and never on Bob's, so a child can always tell whose side they are on.
- One question at the end. What did the other boy mean?
Try it. It takes about a minute.
This is The Swing, the little one-sheet story. Six lines. Pick a cover to start.
Bob's way · read the left page first
1 of 3
That was Bob's story.
Now turn it over.
Same pages, same words. Read them the other way and they belong to Otto.
Same six lines. Two stories.
Every Bob & Otto book works like this.
Forward, Bob wanted to go higher. Backward, Otto was there the whole way down. Neither of them was wrong — they just had different halves of the same afternoon.
Tip: use the arrow keys, or swipe.
Five books. Ten stories.
Each one is a small, ordinary misunderstanding between two best friends. Tap a cover to turn it over.
Swipe to see all five →
Paperback and Kindle links will appear here the day the books go live. Spanish editions: Media frase · La risa · Sitio para tres · Buenas noches, Otto · En los zapatos de Otto.
Meet them
Tap anyone to hear them in their own words.
Free · print at home
Start with the free mini book.
The Swing is a whole Bob & Otto story on one sheet of paper. Print it, fold it, cut once — and you have a little book you can read both ways at the kitchen table. In English and in Spanish.
- One sheet of letter paper, any printer
- Three spreads, a cover at each end
- The same six lines, two stories
It's yours.
Here's the mini book.
How to fold it
- Print it on one side, landscape, at 100% — or "fit to page", it folds the same.
- Fold the sheet in half the long way, then unfold it.
- Fold it in half the short way, then fold each end back to the middle, like a fan of four.
- Cut along the dashed line in the middle — only across the two middle panels.
- Open it up, fold along the long fold, and push both ends in toward the middle. The cut opens into a little book. Bob's cover is on the front; Otto's is on the back.
How to read it with a child
The books do the work. You only need to do three things.
- 1
Read it Bob's way
Left page, then right page, front to back. Bob talks first on every spread.
- 2
Turn it over
Otto's cover is on the back. Read the right page first now, and the book back to front. Same words.
- 3
Ask one question
What did the other boy mean? The answer is the whole point, and children usually find it themselves.
About the author
Jesper K. Lassen is Danish, a mentalist with more than a thousand performances behind him, and the founder of VEN Method. He wrote Bob & Otto so the youngest readers could practice the same thing on paper: hear one side, turn the book over, hear the other, and ask.
For classrooms: VEN Method builds the same connection at school — a whole group around one shared thing. venmethod.com ↗