Tuesday Storytime: Sailing

Spring is a perfect season here for sailing.  We live near a large lake, and the warm days with fresh breezes (and pop-up storms) make for memorable times, and easy pickings for Storytime reads.

Three Bears in a Boat
David Soman
ISBN: 9780803739932
Three bear siblings head off on a sailing adventure to replace an accidentally broken treasure.

The storyline could be a little tighter, and the metaphorical storm vanishes a little too quickly for my tastes, but this story of siblings working together (and fighting) will strike a chord with lots of kids.  Our three bears break mom's beautiful blue shell, and immediately hatch a wild plan to find a replacement.  They sail away into adventure, before returning safe and sound to mom.  A lovely blended homage to the adventure of Where the Wild Things Are and the homey sweetness of Little Bear.


Sail Away 
Donald Crews
ISBN: 9780688110536
Short and onomatopoeic and evocative.

Crews is delightful when he's presenting a simple vibrant concept, and here is no exception.  Super-simple premise has a sailboat puttering out for a day's sail, encountering a storm (over almost as quickly as Soman's was) and puttering back in to moor safely in the harbor.  Graphically arresting, with words that become part of the illustrations, and just enough language to move the pictures along.

Boats Float
George Ella Lyon, illustrated by Mick Wiggins
ISBN: 9781481403801
By the author of Trucks Roll, and of Planes Fly.  Less of a storyline than in Trucks Roll.

The illustrations are busier here than in Trucks Roll - they actually remind me a little bit of the old Richard Scarry books.  The narrative is familiar; a rhyming cadence lists different types of boats, aspects of boats, or boat terminology, and always ends on "Boats Float" at the conclusion of each spread or section.  There is a funky mostly-sideways page that doesn't actually need to be turned sideways (a very winding river with the text following the path of the river) and it goes on just a smidge long for my tastes, but it's fun and cute and has really good vocabulary.

New Arrivals: Picture Book: Three Bears in a Boat, David Soman

Three Bears in a Boat

David Soman (Ladybug Girl and Bumblebee Boy)

ISBN: 9780803739932

Nautical and expressive bear cubs in soft-wash environments, navigating tricky emotions.

Our bear protagonists are siblings, and so you know from the start that there are certain kinds of trouble that it takes good friends or blood-relatives to get into.  After an accident, the trio heads out to repair the damage (and to prevent them from having to fess up).  The sailing isn't always smooth, and the relationship is strained by blame for the accident, but shared peril and misery are always great to put things in perspective.  Our intrepid wanderers come back, somewhat the worse for wear, and find what they were looking for was always right at home (which, in picture book land, is about as good of a moral as you can get).  Special props for the anxious and clingy mother bear at the end, who adults will realize has been much more exercised over the missing cubs than over the broken trinket.

Unsurprisingly from the deft creator of Ladybug Girl, these siblings have good hearts and good intentions, but we see in this story that emotions and circumstances can bring out the worst in even the best of us.  Showing how they rely on each other, forgive each other, and take responsibility (shared) for the inciting problem is a great visual (and so very visual - check out those postures and faces and emotional colorings) to give to little kids who are still figuring out all this complicated emotional and relationship stuff, with brains that aren't even done growing yet.  Sometimes I think that picture books like these that show empathy and emotional connections might even do a lot of grown-ups good.

  

Tuesday Storytime: Boats

Last week of summer for most of us here in SC, so I'm finishing out the season with the last of a trio of "vacation" books, looking at boats on rivers and oceans.

Two of these are repeats, I've used and liked them before, but the middle book (Little Tug) is new to my library, and I tried it out for the first time today.  I liked it also - very short and cute.

Toy Boat
Randall de Seve, illustrated by Loren Long
ISBN: 9780399243745
Painterly full-spread illustrations of a handmade toy boat on a dangerous night alone on the lake.

This is a sweet book, but it does get a little intense - there's a separation, then a storm, and a night alone on the water before the happy reunion with the boy.  I love the cadence of the words here, and the repeated "Move along" from the various sources.


Little Tug
Stephen Savage
ISBN: 9781596436480
Blocky print in limited color palette and very few words show the tug helping boats, and then a sweet goodnight.

This is my first read of this one, and I was a little worried that the lack of text would be a bit of a problem, but the flow was really smooth and slow, and that allowed plenty of time to appreciate the artfully blocky pictures.  I especially liked that the sailboat is male, and the motorboat is female.


Sail Away, Little Boat
Janet Buell, illustrated by Jui Ishida
ISBN: 1575058219
Stylized people and beautiful water scenes follow a toy boat from a brook downstream to the ocean, in verse.

This one is one where I'm not entirely sold on the verse structure.  Some books really just sneak it in there, and other books practically celebrate their verse structure, and some are just so brilliantly versified that it's a joy to read them.  This one is just a bit meh, and that makes it hard to summon the necessary energy to read this (decently long book) in the necessary rhythm to keep the verses and rhymes somewhat pointed.  That may just be me being a bit tired today.  Otherwise, I love that the boat itself is pretty much an excuse to explore the sights and sounds and wildlife (so much wildlife) along a brook, river, bay, and ocean.  The water, especially the fishes in the water, are just mesmerizingly painted.


And that's the end of summer for us, so next week, we'll do "Back to School" even though most of my group are too little to be in classes yet.