‘The Neverending Story’ Google Doodle turns fantasy fancy with 3-D parallax look

Google seems to be telling us all to get lost — in a book. The search engine is honoring “The Neverending Story” on Thursday with a Google Doodle marking the 37th anniversary of the publication of the children’s book.

The 1979 children’s fantasy novel is a book-within-a-book written by Michael Ende and illustrated by Roswitha Quadflieg. The images in the multislide doodle -- details of which are shown above -- are by Sophie Diao and feature five scenes from the story.

The lonely young protagonist of “The Neverending Story,” Bastian Balthazar Bux, steals a copy of the book from an antique store and spirits it away to the attic of his school, where he begins to read.

In doing so, Bastian is transported to the land of Fantastica, where he joins forces with the optimistic luckdragon Falkor and the young hunter Atreyu to save the land’s childlike Empress, whom they are told is dying. Our hero and his pals embark on a journey to save the girl, which of course is done by giving her a new name.

Spoiler alert: The final scene in the Google Doodle suggests a happy ending.

One special thing about the doodle, which is aimed at North America, Western Europe and Japan: According to Google, “today’s Doodle adds a 3-D dimension, with an artwork-packed slideshow that uses parallax scrolling — a Doodle first!” Watch the first 90 seconds of this video to understand what that means, ‘K? Or just check out the doodle at google.com and think, “Wow, that’s what they call it when stuff looks like it’s sliding into place.”

Bummer, however, for people in Eastern Europe and most of Asia, with the exception of Japan. This isn’t a global doodle — in those regions, rather than celebrating imagination, fantastical adventures and dragons, Google is marking the first day of school.

Follow Christie D’Zurilla on Twitter @theCDZ.

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