Masquerade

Masquerade is a picture book that tells the story of a golden hare buried at a hidden location in England through a series of riddles. The pages contain images with concealed clues and text that links both layers together.

Kit Williams published the book in 1979 and actually buried a golden pendant that readers could find by decoding the riddles. The treasure hunt lasted three years and ended in 1982 when someone dug up the hare in a park in Bedfordshire.

The publication influenced children's literature by merging traditional storytelling with puzzle-solving elements, establishing a new genre of treasure hunt books.

Each double page requires close attention as colors, shapes, and details often refer to other images or lines of text. Anyone wanting to solve the riddle themselves should take notes and allow time to recognize the connections between pages.

Williams painted each image on a single large canvas and used a special technique for each detail that allowed him to hide several layers of meaning in a single motif. The solution to the clues followed a system based on the position of body parts and fingers in the images.