Updated: Jun 14, 2022
Off a small island, an old boat sets sail and a young boy finds home. Together, boy and boat ride the shifting tides, catching wants and wishes until fate calls for a sea change.
Pick by Dan Yaccarino, The Longest Storm:
THE OLD BOAT
By Jarrett Pumphrey and Jerome Pumphrey
Publisher: Norton Young Readers (March 2, 2021)
What inspired The Old Boat? TPB: "As is the case with most our work, lots of things inspired The Old Boat, but it was mainly family. Two things in particular: the trips we used to take to Galveston, TX, with our grandma when we were kids and the old boat our grandpa kept stored in his driveway. Our grandma taught us how to fish and crab; she showed us how to appreciate the ocean for the amazing resource it is. Our grandpa stored an old bay boat under his carport, and it was always the first place we’d go whenever we visited. We spent more time in that boat than we did in the house, sailing all over the world without ever leaving the driveway." Tell me about your stamps. "We started making art with stamps for a few reasons: 1) It’s a great medium for collaboration. While one of us is designing the stamps, the other can be cutting them and making prints. 2) Stamps—the foam stamps we make, at least—have a sort of built-in limiter that helps us keep things simple; you can only get so many details in there before things start to fall apart, literally. 3) We love the timeless look of classic children’s books and we can get something close to that with stamps."
Your text is so quietly and deeply moving. What are some picture books that have deeply moved you? "Big Cat, Little Cat by Elisha Cooper, A House that Once Was by Julie Fogliano and Lane Smith, Blue by Laura Vaccaro Seeger, and pretty much anything Sydney Smith illustrates, including Town is by the Sea by Joanne Schwartz, I Talk Like a River by Jordan Scott, and his very own Small in the City."
I love your gorgeous take on intergenerational love. What are some picture books you love for their compelling takes on family? "Family is a big deal to us. Some of the books that we think nail it are Alma and How She Got Her Name by Juana Martinez-Neal, Saturday by Oge Mora, Ocean Meets Sky by The Fan Brothers, Drawn Together by Minh Lê and Dan Santat."
I love The Old Boat's message of environmental stewardship. Are there other picture books you love for their unique take on environmental stewardship, responsibility or change? "There are! Here are a few: We Are Water Protectors by Carole Lindstrom and Michaela Goade, One Little Bag by Henry Cole, Here We Are by Oliver Jeffers."
Owl just wants some peace and quiet to read his books—alone. But when the forest youngsters ruffle his feathers, he enlists the local bookshop owner to send him handpicked books to help cope with the chaos and the mess. It’s not long before Owl discovers Squirrel and learns that just as important as solitude are companionship and community.
YOURS IN BOOKS
Written by Julie Falatko and illustrated by Gabriel Alborozo
Publisher: Cameron Kids (September 21, 2021)
What inspired Yours in Books? JF: "The short answer is that I love letters and I love books. I think there’s something really special about sending mail to people. Yes, most of the time I send an email, but a handwritten letter is like a more real piece of me (and a postcard is like a text message!). I am obsessed with the concept of having something funny happen to you, and it makes you think of your friend, and
then you take the time to write the funny story out in a letter, which they get many days later. It’s this super tangible, very slow way of staying connected to people. I used to write letters to everyone, back when phone calls were expensive, and during the pandemic I got back in the habit of sending mail to people.
In a lot of ways, a book is a letter. It’s a piece of you, the author, and you’re sending it out into the world. In this case the friend I’m sending it to is 'all the readers.'"
I laughed out loud so many times reading Yours in Books. Who are some other writers you admire for their humor? "Oh gosh, so many. Once you hear Bob Shea read any of his books out loud, you can’t help but read them with his cadence, and hope the kid you’re reading to hasn’t also heard Bob read, or else they’re going to ask why you’re doing a cheap Bob Shea impersonation. Kid Sheriff and the Terrible Toads, illustrated by Lane Smith, is one that makes me feel like a comedic genius reading it. Laurie Keller is incredible. I remember the first time I read The Scrambled States of America, I felt such a weird kinship – here was this hilarious person who had the same sense of humor I did. There’s such a magic to making someone laugh through a book. Potato Pants is comedy genius. Anything my frequent collaborator Ruth Chan does is so, so hilarious. The way Ruth draws faces – I could look at them all day. So funny. She illustrated a book called Have You Seen Gordon? that just came out (it’s written by Adam Jay Epstein) and every illustration in that is a masterclass in comedy."
Now I have to ask: What's your favorite bookshop? "I am lucky enough to live in an area (Portland, Maine) with quite a few independent bookshops, all of which are incredible. Nonesuch, Sherman’s, Longfellow and Bull Moose are great. My favorite is Print: A Bookstore, which I love so much that I named the bookstore in Yours in Books after it."
Do you remember what you loved reading to your children at age three? At age five? "We live in Maine, so we’re contractually obligated to read and love Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney, One Morning in Maine and Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey, and Lobsterman by Dahlov Ipcar. I also remember reading Bink and Gollie: Two for One by Kate DiCamillo and Alison McGhee, and illustrated by Tony Fucile, and one of my kids laughing so hard he fell out of his chair."
What contemporary picture books do you think will be the new classics of the future? "Lucy Ruth Cummins makes these books that look like something from fifty years ago that every generation in your family has read and loved to bits. Her illustrations and humor have a very solid retro feel, like she’s tapped into a vein of storytelling that has been true for centuries. A Hungry Lion: Or a Dwindling Assortment of Animals, Stumpkin, and Vampenguin are all so great. Everything Carter Higgins makes is something that will clearly be enjoyed by readers for decades. It’s like she captures dreams in jars and writes them onto the page. Everything You Need for a Treehouse (illustrated by Emily Hughes), Circle Under Berry, This is Not a Valentine (illustrated by Lucy Ruth Cummins): they all are things you’ve wished for but didn’t know it until you pick the book up."
What would be on your list of 100 best picture books of all time? "I’ll list one, because if I list two I’ll have to list 100. Amos and Boris by William Steig is my favorite picture book of all time. It’s funny, it’s beautiful, it’s heartbreaking and wondrous, and uses language in a way I will forever aspire to."
Updated: Oct 4, 2021
Marco the fox has a lot of questions, but none of the other foxes share his curiosity. So when a magnificent ship adorned with antlers and with a deer for a captain arrives at the dock looking for a crew, Marco volunteers. Will he find his answers at last?
Pick by Chris Van Dusen, The Circus Ship:
THE ANTLERED SHIP
Written by Dashka Slater and illustrated by The Fan Brothers
Publisher: Beach Lane Books (September 12, 2017)
What inspired you to write The Antlered Ship? DS: "One morning, I woke with an image hovering just behind my eyes, like the afterimage of a bright light. A ship with antlers at its prow, sailing into a harbor. I had no memory of the dream it had come from, if it had indeed come from a dream. All I had were questions: Why did that ship have antlers? Where was it going? Who was on board and what were they
looking for? The only way to find the answer was to sit down and write the story.
As I wrote, I encountered Marco the fox, who boarded the Antlered Ship to find answers to his questions about the world. His quest mirrored my own. The more I wrote, the more I recognized in Marco the curiosity that made me both a reader and a writer.
I didn’t know that The Antlered Ship was a book about curiosity when I started it. But if I hadn’t been curious, I never would have found out. I hope that when children read the book, they’ll be inspired to be lifelong questioners, asking questions not just of parents, teachers, and librarians, but of themselves and of each other. As Marco discovers in the course of the story, the quest to find answers is often more important than the answers themselves, and the best answers inevitably lead to more questions."
Are there other picture books you love about sea adventures? "Two of my favorite sea adventure picture books are Mabel: A Mermaid Fable by Rowboat Watkins and The Little Island by Margaret Wise Brown and Leonard Weisgard. Not coincidentally, both are somewhat philosophical as well. Plus two more gorgeous sea-themed books: Swashby and The Sea by Beth Ferry and Juana Martinez-Neal and There Might Be Lobsters by Carolyn Crimi and Laurel Molk."
What was your favorite picture book as a child?
"I absolutely loved A Little House of Your Own by Beatrice Schenk De Regniers and Irene Haas. It's a small, strange book about the need for privacy and solitude that voiced something I had always understood about myself but had never known how to name."
Do you remember what you loved reading to your child at age three? At age five? "My son and I were big fans of King Bidgood’s in the Bathtub by Audrey and Don Wood, which allows for a lot of fun voices, and The Slow Train to Oxmox by Kurt Cyrus, a wonderfully surreal story about a verrrrry slow train that is sadly now out of print. We were also both obsessed by Olga Dugina and Andrej Dugin’s version of The Brave Little Tailor, with their breathtakingly bizarre illustrations."
What are your favorite classic picture books? "So many! One less well-known one is I Want To Paint My Bathroom Blue by Ruth Krauss and Maurice Sendak which captures a child’s voice so perfectly and has such sweet Chagall-like illustrations. I’m a huge fan of all things Sendak, whose visions furnished the inside of my head when I was small. The books he wrote are my favorites – particularly Where The Wild Things Are, In the Night Kitchen, and Nutshell Library, but I also love books like Mr. Rabbit and the Lovely Present by Charlotte Zolotow and A Hole Is To Dig by Ruth Krauss, both of which were illustrated by Sendak and are written by two of children’s literature’s greatest writers."
What are some recent picture books that you hope will be the new classics? "Again, there are so many! I love She Wanted To Be Haunted by Marcus Ewert and Susie Ghahremani, Hungry Jim by Laurel Snyder and Chuck Groenink, In the Half Room by Carson Ellis, The Undefeated by Kwame Alexander and Kadir Nelson, My Best Friend by Julie Fogliano and Jillian Tamaki, and I am super excited about the soon-to-be-released What Will My Story Be? by Nidhi Chanani."
What would be on your list of 100 best picture books of all time? "One I haven’t yet mentioned is If You Want To See A Whale by Julie Fogliano and Erin Stead."