Will I love Masquerade?

You might not think a picture book could entice and stump adult readers for decades upon decades.

Not only has Masquerade accomplished that, but it fueled a real-life global hunt for a buried treasure—a golden rabbit hidden in a secret location pointed to by clues in the illustrations and text—that lasted over three years. Controversy abounds over whether the winner actually solved the puzzle on his own or happened upon the rabbit by happenstance.

Treasure or not, the book is priceless in its own right, full of hints and mysteries, many of which we still haven’t fully riddled out.

I’m not necessarily including Masquerade because of its objective quality as a picture book. It’s the concept behind it that really captures my imagination. Similar to The Eleventh Hour, each illustration has a seek-and-find element as well as several embedded puzzles and codes. If you put all the clues together, they solve a mystery. However, unlike The Eleventh Hour, Masquerade’s mystery wasn’t originally relegated to the pages of a book. The solution revealed the location of a real-life buried treasure. You read that correctly. Author-illustrator, Kit Williams, actually went out in secret and buried a jeweled, golden hare at a… show more.