''I Spy'' is an American

children's book series Children's literature or juvenile literature includes stories, books, magazines, and poems that are created for children. In addition to conventional literary genres, modern children's literature is classified by the intended age of the reade ...

, first published in the 1990s, with text written by Jean Marzollo, and photographs by Walter Wick, from

Scholastic Press Scholastic Corporation is an American multinational publishing, education, and media company that publishes and distributes books, comics, and educational materials for schools, teachers, parents, children, and other educational institutions. P ...

. Each page contains a photo with objects in it, and the riddles (written in dactylic tetrameter rhyme) accompanying the photo state which objects have to be found. Although the first ''I Spy'' book contains unrelated pages of still life pictures, subsequent books are more thematic. Several video games based on the ''I Spy'' books are available for Windows PC,

Nintendo DS The is a foldable handheld game console produced by Nintendo, released globally across 2004 and 2005. The DS, an initialism for "Developers' System" or "Dual Screen", introduced distinctive new features to handheld games: two LCD screens worki ...

Wii The Wii ( ) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Nintendo. It was released on November 19, 2006, in North America, and in December 2006 for most other regions of the world. It is Nintendo's fifth major home game console, f ...

iOS Ios, Io or Nio (, ; ; locally Nios, Νιός) is a Greek island in the Cyclades group in the Aegean Sea. Ios is a hilly island with cliffs down to the sea on most sides. It is situated halfway between Naxos and Santorini. It is about long an ...

, Leapster, and

Game Boy Advance The (GBA) is a 32-bit handheld game console, manufactured by Nintendo, which was released in Japan on March 21, 2001, and to international markets that June. It was later released in mainland China in 2004, under the name iQue Game Boy Advanc ...

, including '' I Spy Spooky Mansion'', ''I Spy Treasure Hunt'', and ''I Spy Fantasy''. These served as early examples of an increasingly popular

hidden object game A hidden object game, also called hidden picture or hidden object puzzle adventure (HOPA), is a subgenre of puzzle video game, puzzle video games in which the player must find items from a list that are hidden within a scene. Hidden object games a ...

genre. ''I Spy'' merchandise has been sold in at least 31 countries worldwide. Wick stated in a 1997 news article, "My career can really be put into two categories: before ''I Spy'' and after ''I Spy''. ... The success of the books has been really nice. I never got that lucky break in my commercial career, but all of that hard work ... was usable for ''I Spy''."

Authors

Jean Marzollo was the award-winning author of over 100 books, including ''Help Me Learn Numbers 0-20'', ''Help Me Learn Addition'', ''Help Me Learn Subtraction'', ''Pierre the Penguin'', ''Soccer Sam'', ''Happy Birthday Martin Luther King'', ''The Little Plant Doctor'', ''In 1776, Mama Mama/Papa Papa'', and ''I Am Water'', as well as books for parents and teachers such as ''The New Kindergarten''. Walter Wick is the author and photographer of the best-selling series '' Can You See What I See?''. Carol Carson Devine, the book designer for the first ''I Spy'' books, is art director at Alfred A. Knopf Publishers. She has designed covers for books by

John Updike John Hoyer Updike (March 18, 1932 – January 27, 2009) was an American novelist, poet, short-story writer, art critic, and literary critic. One of only four writers to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction more than once (the others being Booth Tar ...

Joan Didion Joan Didion (; December 5, 1934 – December 23, 2021) was an American writer and journalist. She is considered one of the pioneers of New Journalism, along with Gay Talese, Truman Capote, Norman Mailer, Hunter S. Thompson, and Tom Wolfe. Didio ...

Alice Munro Alice Ann Munro ( ; ; 10 July 1931 – 13 May 2024) was a Canadian short story writer who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013. Her work tends to move forward and backward in time, with integrated short story cycles. Munro's ...

Bill Clinton William Jefferson Clinton (né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician and lawyer who was the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, ...

and

Pope John Paul II Pope John Paul II (born Karol Józef Wojtyła; 18 May 19202 April 2005) was head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 16 October 1978 until Death and funeral of Pope John Paul II, his death in 2005. In his you ...

List of books

Multiple sub-series of the I SPY books have been released.

I Spy

I SPY readers

I SPY board books

I SPY 8 x 8

I SPY miscellaneous

References

External links

Jean Marzollo Website ''I Spy'' Page Walter Wick Website ''I SPY'' PageScholastic ''I SPY'' Page
{{Portal , Children's literature Series of children's books Puzzle books Scholastic Corporation books