A boat is folded on board a ship and carefully launched. Then the ship sails away and the boat is alone. It sails across the ocean, along reefs and poles and between ice floes. It navigates between schools of fish, swaying aquatic plants and terrifying sea monsters. It surprises with a wonderful fairytale world above and below ---from the publisher
******************
As with Shaun Tan's The Arrival, it gives us collective goosebumps to introduce the singular talent and imagination of Peter Van den Ende to North America. Without a word, and with Escher-like precision, Van den Ende presents one little paper boat's journey across the ocean, past reefs and between icebergs, through schools of fish, swaying water plants, and terrifying sea monsters.
The little boat is all alone, and while its aloneness gives it the chance to wonder at the fairy-tale world above and below the waves uninterrupted, that also means it must save itself when it storms. And so it does.
We hope that readers young and old will find the strength and inspiration that we did in this quietly powerful story about growing, learning, and life's ups and downs.---from the publisher
96 pages 978-1646140176 Ages 9 and up
Keywords: boat, ocean, adventure, metaphor, fantasy, magic, graphic novel, 9 year old 10 year old, 11 year old, 12 year old, inspiration, journey, self reliance, survival, sea monsters, wordless
Other reviews:
"Wonderfully strange and strangely wonderful, Peter Van den Ende's Wanderer is an epic dream captured in superbly meticulous detail."—Shaun Tan
The Wanderer is Peter Van den Ende's remarkable debut as a picture book artist. When he's not drawing, he works as a nature guide in the Cayman Islands. The beauty of the sea was his source of inspiration for his wonderful wordless story.