Where's Wally? (known in the United States and Canada as Where's Waldo?) is a series of children's books created by the English illustrator Martin Handford. The books consist of a series of detailed double-page spread illustrations depicting dozens or more people doing a variety of amusing things at a given location. Readers are challenged to find a character named Wally hidden in the group. Wally's distinctive red-and-white-striped shirt, bobble hat, and glasses make him slightly easier to recognise, but many illustrations contain red herrings involving deceptive use of red-and-white striped objects. Later entries in the long-running book series added other targets for readers to find in each illustration. The books have also inspired a TV show, comic strip and a series of video games.

History

In 1986, Handford was asked by his art director at Walker Books to draw a character with peculiar features so that his pictures of crowds had a focal point. After much thinking, he came up with the idea of "Wally", a world traveller and time travel aficionado who always dresses in red and white. Sometimes it would take him up to eight weeks to draw a two-page sketch of the elusive "Wally" and the characters surrounding him.

The Where's Wally? comic strip was featured in many newspapers in the early 1990s. The weekly Sunday comic was distributed by King Features Syndicate. The strip was later translated and reworked for international markets.

Several activity books of the comic strip were released in the mid-1990s.

Several of the books and comics were also released in the US under the Where's Waldo name.

Where's Wally?, published in the United States and Canada as Where's Waldo?, is the title of the first book in the Where's Wally? series, published in 1987. In the book, Wally travels to everyday places, where he sends postcards to the reader (which are the pictures in the book), and the reader must locate Wally in the postcard. The book became an instant best-seller. Where's Wally? was re-released in October 1997 in a special 10th anniversary edition form. The location of Wally was changed in each picture and additional characters were added for the reader to find (Woof, Wizard Whitebeard, Wenda, Odlaw, the Wally Watchers, and others).

The Wally series is quite evocative of an earlier children's book titled "Where's Wallace?" (by Hilary Knight), in which a red-headed orangutan escapes from the zoo and "hides" in highly detailed picture panoramas, including beach, department store, circus, stadium, and museum

Scenes