Ship Ahoy! - Hardcover

Sis, Peter

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 068816644X ISBN 13: 9780688166441

Publisher: Greenwillow Books, 1999

Synopsis

While sitting on his living room couch that is atop a big blue rug, little Matt begins to pretend that he is on an incredible sailing adventure on the wide-open seas, yet when his mothers enters the room with the vacuum, his journey takes an unexpected turn.

About this title

About the Author

Peter Sis was born in Czechoslovakia and now lives in New York City with his wife and two children. His drawings appear regularly in The New York Times Book Review and other publications. He is the author-artist of The Three Golden Keys, Komodo!, Follow the Dream, and A Small, Tall Tale from the Far, Far North. He has illustrated several books by other authors, including Sid Fleischman and George Shannon.

In His Own Words...

"I was born in the middle of the century and grew up in the magical city of Prague, Czechoslovakia, in the heart of Europe. My father was a filmmaker and explorer, and he brought back many interesting things from his travels to Tibet, Borneo, and other places all over the world.

"From early on, I was encouraged to make pictures by my mother and father, both artists, and by their artist friends. I was not always encouraged at school, where I used to draw little pictures on everything, for everybody, usually in the middle of class.

"I remember with great fondness what I thought of as the largest bookstore imaginable. It was our library at home. My mother's father designed railway stations in Cleveland and Chicago in the 1930s, and my mother lived in the United States as a little girl. When the family returned home, my grandfather brought back with him a great many books, including a collection of all the Sunday cartoons from the Chicago newspapers bound in one large volume. I remember stretching myself over a page, and panel by panel devouring Little Orphan Annie, Mutt and Jeff, Krazy Kat, and the one with the little cable car.

"I went from art school to art school and had some wonderful teachers, especially J. Trnka, who was a famous illustrator and animator. I remember sometimes becoming so involved with a picture that I didn't notice the night was just about over. I would place the picture next to my bed so that I could see it first thing when I awoke. Things changed when my daughter, Madeleine, was born. I began to get up at night to look at the picture and my daughter. Now that my son, Matej, is here, my pictures remain out of the house in the babyproof studio, and I get up at night just to look at the children.

"I was lucky to have Quentin Blake as a tutor at London's Royal College of Art. By that time, I had already become involved with animated films. After my film Heads won a prize in Berlin in 1980, 1 did an animation series for TV in Zurich, Switzerland, and then another film in London. Before I knew it, I found myself working on a film in Los Angeles. But what I really wanted was to draw and paint my own pictures.

"On the advice of a wonderful friend, Josine lanco, I wrote to Maurice Sendak, hardly expecting him to write back. He didn't. He telephoned, first from the East Coast and then from Los Angeles, where he had come to be honored by the American Library Association. By then I had a hazy idea that I should go to the East to meet with children's book publishers.

"To my surprise, Mr. Sendak, after seeing my portfolio, in the last hours of the ALA convention, introduced me to Ava Weiss, Greenwillow's art director. I showed her my work, and she in turn introduced me to Susan Hirschman and Greenwillow. Shortly thereafter I started work on my first book, Bean Boy, by George Shannon. I moved to New York, and here I am, many books and some dozen years later. Before I had Madeleine and Matej, I thought the reason I did my books was to win medals and awards. Now I have received the Caldecott Honor and awards from the Society of Illustrators, the New York Times, the Boston Globe-Horn Book, and many international organizations. And what really matters to me is not awards but what children--and my own children in particular--think of my books. Now I do my books just for them. My children like my books, but they do not really know I am the author. I like it that way...."

From Publishers Weekly

A couch metamorphoses into a series of seaworthy vessels as a boy imagines himself sailing over the waters of a small blue rug. Much of the charm of this wordless, nearly monochromatic book lies in the play between the similarities and differences in the two illustrations on each spread. On the left, the boy sits on the couch with various props, positioned to suggest the oar of a canoe, the mast of a sailing ship or the periscope of a submarine. The right shows the imagined scene as the boy steers a raft or commands a huge ocean liner. While the left-hand scene is rendered with dark, broad lines (so broad that it's hard to tell exactly what the boy's props are), the imagined scene is more finely drawn and modulated with blue watercolor wash. The vessels become more elaborate as the boy's fantasy life confidently expands, until the sudden appearance of a huge colorful sea monster (in a three-panel fold-out spread) dwarfs him on a vulnerable raft. The monster turns out to be his mother's vacuum cleaner, and in the final image, mother and son read about boats while sitting on the rugAnow just a rug. Tender and inviting, this well-conceived book speaks to kids' twin needs for familiarity and adventure. Ages 3-up. (Sept.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Greenwillow Books
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 068816644X
• ISBN 13: 9780688166441
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 24