Review by New York Times Review
From serene to storm-tossed, the sea has long served as a mood ring for narrative literature and art: a powerful mirror and metaphor for exploring our inner weather. Three new picture books take readers out into these deep waters, each for an adventure with its own emotional complexion. In Julie Fogliano¿s ¿If You Want to See a Whale,¿ the ocean is unwaveringly calm ¿ not unlike the young boy who encounters, or rather imagines it. As the boy demonstrates the author¿s tips for successful whale watching, we recognize him as one of those bright, quirky children who can find contentment anywhere by daydreaming for hours at a time. Parents often feel compelled to send such children outdoors for ¿fresh air¿ or to kick the can down the road with friends. This quiet book reminds us that daydreaming is a pleasurable activity for children, and that it can lead to a larger sense of the world. ¿If you want to see a whale,¿ the author advises, ¿you will need a window, and an ocean, and time for waiting, and time for looking . . . ¿ Fogliano¿s words are carved and measured. This is a writer who takes her time, and the leaps she makes with language surprise and thrill. Erin E. Stead, winner of the 2011 Caldecott Medal for ¿A Sick Day for Amos McGee,¿ draws with a firm, spare hand, and her illustrations have a crafted, artisanal feel. They luxuriate in white space and unarticulated expanses of softened color that leave readers with room for their own thoughts. The book¿s dimensions are more modest than those chosen for many a picture book, yet Stead¿s illustrations have more breadth than most. Not every child will drop anchor long enough to savor this resolutely understated story, but those who do will be glad they did. Other children prefer a good storm. Ever since Tomi Ungerer moved to New York in the mid-1950s and embarked on a picture-book career, the Alsatian-born illustrator has made a specialty of stirring up the waters. From such early books as ¿The Mellops Go Flying¿ and ¿Crictor¿ onward, his drolly devil-may-care productions have garnered praise while also courting controversy, as in ¿Crictor,¿ when he depicted an octopus with seven legs, apparently to see if anyone would notice. Drops of spilled blood, a man in a crowd scene impaled by an umbrella: Ungerer planted ever more outrageous combustibles in his illustrations with a view to feeding his young fans¿ inner Wild Thing, and tweaking the noses of their strait-laced minders. Not all that surprisingly, the Caldecott Medal has not come his way. In the 1970s, after generating further controversy with his searing anti-Vietnam War posters and forays into erotic art, Ungerer returned to Europe, where his picture books remain as well known as those by Maurice Sendak, if not more so. In ¿Fog Island¿ the old high jinks have largely given way to an urge to dive into mythic waters and tell a fateful tale inspired by Ungerer¿s years living along the Irish coast. For once, the storm in question is a real storm, and a young brother and sister are caught in it in their fogbound boat at sea. The next thing they know, the brave but powerless children are washed ashore on an island they have been warned not to visit: Fog Island. When they encounter a Methuselah-like man with floor-length hair and a candle strapped to his forehead, they fear the worst. ¿I am the Fog Man,¿ their host announces. ¿I am the one who makes it.¿ To their relief, he proves to be an agreeable fellow, a benign, hard-working fog god or spirit whom the villagers have plainly misjudged. He sings for the children, then sends them off, fog-free, toward home. But storms lie beyond his purview, and soon the two doughty youngsters will face the fright of their lives. Mist-shrouded sea and landscapes in dour grays and greens set a scene that lies light-years away from the chipper, Day-Glo shallows of, say, ¿Pinkalicious.¿ Ungerer¿s drawings, like blowups of panels from an Expressionist graphic novel, are cartoonishly raw and emotionally penetrating, though they come with a generous dash of silly sight gags, too. Here, with a becoming respect for children¿s curiosity about the forces that govern the world and their role in that grand scheme, Ungerer takes young readers to a place they have never been before, and he does the same for the picture book. Just as unusual in its way is ¿The Enduring Ark,¿ a retelling of the biblical story of Noah and the Flood, in an accordion-style, friezelike book from Tara Books, an innovative publishing collective based in Chennai, India. The cross-cultural fit between an Old Testament narrative and artwork by a traditional West Bengali scroll painter is bound to puzzle at first. But Hindu scripture has its own flood myth, as do ancient story-cycles from around the world. As Gita Wolf, who is also Tara¿s publisher, states in the prologue, ¿Great tales deserve to be repeated.¿ A dwindling clan of itinerant West Bengali artist-singer-storytellers carries on the folk tradition known as Patua scroll painting. Driving rhythmic line work, vivid but slightly muted colors, and flattened, strongly silhouetted renderings of animals, people and plants make for an action-packed panorama that is easily read. Tears that in the opening panel pour forth from the all-seeing eye of a saddened God form a watery baseline for the scene that in every sense is about to unfold. As the rains begin, the water level rises; by the second side of the frieze, water has engulfed everything. Gradually, mere fascination with the artwork¿s novelty yields to a gripping recognition of a world ¿ our world ¿ in radical free fall and transformation. But who, really, is such a picture narrative for? Children¿s books are the literature of hope, and so is this haunting old tale about an ark riding the waves of a sea of troubles. Leonard S. Marcus is the author of the forthcoming ¿Randolph Caldecott: The Man Who Could Not Stop Drawing.¿
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [July 2, 2013]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* In this gorgeous love song to the imagination, a little boy and his trusty basset hound want nothing more than to catch a glimpse of a whale. If you want to see a whale, there are certain things you'll need, like a window looking out on a vast ocean. You'll need plenty of patience, too: time for waiting / and time for looking / and time for wondering, 'is that a whale?''' You might be distracted by miraculous things along the way, like the sweet, fragrant smell of pink roses or pelicans perched on posts or an inchworm on a leaf. These are all wonderful things, but they are not a whale. But if you keep both eyes on the sea / and wait . . . / and wait . . . / and wait . . ., it just might happen. The creators of And Then It's Spring (2012) return with this quiet, contemplative, beautiful poem about patience and dreams and about enjoying the journey. The illustrations open up from a boy sitting before a window into the world of his own imagination, where whale-shaped clouds swirl overhead and an armchair becomes a boat. Sea-foam colors, set off on white backgrounds, saturate the pages; the blues and greens are textured, giving the sea a palpability and immediacy. And when that whale emerges at the very end, it's breathtaking, and most certainly worth the wait. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Stead took home the Caldecott for A Sick Day for Amos McGee in 2011, while Fogliano and Stead's first outing, And Then It's Spring, received five starred reviews. Fans will be waiting.--Kelley, Ann Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Fogliano and Stead team up again to examine the relationship between patience and reward, trading the gardening theme of And Then It's Spring for a maritime setting. The text resembles a series of brief poems, each beginning with the phrase of the title: "if you want to see a whale/ you will need a window/ and an ocean/ and time for waiting/ and time for looking/ and time for wondering 'is that a whale?' " Stead's pencil and woodblock prints-as delicate, understated, and imaginative as ever-take exciting creative license with Fogliano's expressive writing. When the author cautions against getting too comfortable ("because sleeping eyes can't watch for whales"), a redheaded boy-the one seeking the whale-is seen leaning over a yellow armchair, peering down into the pale green sea in which it bobs. Gentle irony courses through the story: when Fogliano warns against being sidetracked by fragrant wild roses or the possibility of pirates in the harbor, it's clear that those "distractions," while certainly different than the split-second magic of spotting a whale, are treasures in themselves. Ages 2-6. Illustrator's agent: Emily van Beek, Folio Literary Management. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
PreS-Gr 2-A poetic text advises children what to do (and not do) if they want to see a whale, as the illustrations show a boy, a dog, and a bird trying out the actions suggested: ".if you want to see a whale,/you will need a not-so-comfy chair/and a not-so-cozy blanket/because sleeping eyes can't watch for whales." and ".if you want to see a whale/you shouldn't watch the clouds/...because if you start to look straight up/you might just miss a whale." An imaginative effort, the book uses linoleum printing techniques and pencil for the softly colored illustrations. It is also designed with a great deal of white space, which deftly evokes the mystery and vastness of the sea. A unique and lovely offering that will appeal to sensitive and patient children.-Judith Constantinides, formerly at East Baton Rouge Parish Main Library, LA (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Horn Book Review
The same pair that brought us And Then It's Spring (rev. 1/12) returns with a book that has a similar overall feel but a completely different story. Once again the protagonist is a small boy with a whole lot of patience. But where the earlier book dealt with the facts of nature, this one takes on the possibility of imagination. "If you want to see a whale / you will need a window," it begins. A window? Well, of course you do, if you're a kid in a landlocked house with an armchair for a ship. Fogliano's text cleverly tells us all the things we should ignore -- a pirate ship, a pelican, a caterpillar -- as we focus our vision on the longed-for whale. Stead's illustrations seem, at first, to offer a literal interpretation of the words, but on second glance we see that it's more complicated than that. A folded paper hat becomes a distant ship, a yellow armchair turns into a yellow boat, roses on the living room wallpaper are suddenly roses in a garden, and the big green rug becomes...Wait, is it a rug or an ocean? (The genius of Stead's art is that it leaves space for the viewer's imagination to interpret the pictures.) And then there's a whale, stretched across the width of the last double-page spread, just under the surface of the water where the boy is watching and waiting. It ends exactly as we imagined it would. kathleen t. horning (c) Copyright 2013. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Fogliano and Stead (And Then It's Spring, 2012) produce another tender, timid story about a boy, his animal friends (a basset hound and a bird) and practicing patience. Whale watching requires lots of resolve to avoid distractions like birds, roses, pirate ships, clouds, pelicans and so on. Fogliano's exhaustive accounting of what not to notice artfully communicates the impossibility of unflagging focus. Her skeined advice unreels in a vivid, looping poem, while Stead's soft, accompanying artwork settles into subdued, simple compositions. Linoleum printing offers oceanic, undulating blues and greens, while pencil drawings bring the redheaded boy's freckles and his hound's drooping skin into focus. Stunning specificity surfaces in the poem's off-kilter phrasing (an inchworm's "just nibble scoot" across a leaf). The drifting verse floats and coalesces like the clouds that threaten to divert the boy from whale watching. When read aloud, it charms like an incantation. The poem's unresolved ellipses at the conclusion suggest an unending whale hunt, but Stead's final two images silently deliver what we've been waiting for. The whale, huge and hidden, floats beneath the unknowing child's tiny vessel and then twists its mass, pulling its head completely out of the water. The boy, his dog and bird rear back in wonder; readers will gape at the two enormous, whale-sized talents at work in this transfixing picture book. (Picture book. 2-6)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
