Dip into these picture books about pools and beaches, swimming and sailing, calm waters and stormy seas.
CHOICES
Written and illustrated by Roozeboos
The Dutch artist Anne Roos Kleiss, who uses her childhood nickname professionally to remind herself to approach her work with the fresh eyes of a child, says she came up with the concept for this debut — created on colored paper using crayons, markers, colored pencil and ink — while drawing outside at a public pool: “I saw a little boy who kept feeling the water to see if he could jump in. His delicate hesitation in this happy, busy environment touched me.” The book’s delightfully curious heroine dips her toe into a whirl of small choices before it feels right to follow her heart on one big one: stepping off the diving board of life.
32 pp. Child’s Play. $17.99. (Ages 5 to 7)
SAVING AMERICAN BEACH
The Biography of African American Environmentalist MaVynee Betsch
Written by Heidi Tyline King
Illustrated by Ekua Holmes
When Betsch left her career as an internationally acclaimed opera singer to dedicate her life to saving the Florida beach her great-grandfather bought in the 1930s for African Americans, she painted her lips and fingernails orange as a reminder of the rope that separated Blacks from whites at Jim Crow-era beaches. When she died, hundreds of orange butterflies were released. The Caldecott Medalist Holmes celebrates this champion of color with wondrous multi-patterned collage.
40 pp. Putnam. $17.99. (Ages 4 to 8)
THE BOY AND THE SEA
Written by Camille Andros
Illustrated by Amy Bates
Listening to the voice inside you is the theme of this emotionally daring and poetic work. Mirroring the life cycle, it opens with a young boy holding a seashell to his ear as his grandfather looks on (“the sea was old and wise”) and closes many years later when the boy himself is a grandfather (“the boy was old and wise”). What he feels in between is sometimes “dark and dangerous,” sometimes “tranquil and tender,” and sometimes “the pull of something more”: to dream, to love, to be. Bates’s moving, majestic art — rendered in gouache, watercolor and colored pencil — matches these stakes and raises them, showing not just the joy but the anguish.
32 pp. Abrams. $17.99. (Ages 4 to 8)
HIDDEN TREASURE
Written and illustrated by Elly MacKay
The medium perfectly fits the message in this one-of-a-kind book about a girl’s search for wave-washed treasures: “a bubble wand, a rusty key, a marble, too, all lost at sea.” Inspired by Victorian paper theaters, stereoscopes and tunnel books, MacKay creates her illustrations from layered paper cutouts set up three-dimensionally. Some scenes look otherworldly; she shines a table light behind the paper to make it glow, uses cellophane for water, mixes ink and salt for sand.
32 pp. Running Press. $16.99. (Ages 4 to 8)
SAIL
Written and illustrated by Dorien Brouwers
Despite its title, this metaphorical tale, stunningly told via textured watercolor-and-monoprint art, is about the transformative opportunities of drifting off course or falling in: “Powerful wisdom is found in the deep. Rock bottom is where you’ll find Treasure to keep.” The book’s palette gradually changes from still, washed-out pastel blues, as the sailboat skims the surface, to dark charcoal shadows, against which a sprawling red octopus brandishes keys.
40 pp. Little, Brown. $17.99. (Ages 4 to 8)
BREAKING WAVES
Winslow Homer Paints the Sea
Written by Robert Burleigh
Illustrated by Wendell Minor
Burleigh’s vivid narrative, beginning and ending in winter, and set in Prouts Neck, Maine — where Homer lived for most of his life on a cliff overlooking the Atlantic Ocean — captures the painter’s fascination with the “wild struggle” of “sea versus land, land versus sea.” The watercolor and gouache illustrations let us feel the splash and the spray, of both the crashing surf and the swooshing paint: “White drops scattering across the canvas. Rough and rapid brush strokes.” Until, finally, the sea and the painting become one.
40 pp. Neal Porter/Holiday House. $18.99. (Ages 4 to 8)
NOAH’S SEAL
Written and illustrated by Layn Marlow
This quiet, beautifully crafted gem of a book follows a boy who sits and waits “at the edge of the wild wide sea” — “as he did yesterday and the day before that” — for his Nana to fix their small boat. He’s been longing to see a seal. To pass the time, he digs with a shovel, aimlessly tossing sand over his shoulder, until … “When Noah turns around, he gasps”: A “big damp mound” is waiting for him, waiting to be smoothed into shape as his friend. But the story doesn’t end there. What happens when a storm whips up and Noah must leave his seal is astonishing to behold. “When Nana turns around, she gasps.”
32 pp. Candlewick. $17.99. (Ages 3 to 7)
SAND BETWEEN MY TOES
Written by Caroline Cross
Illustrated by Jenny Duke
As granular as the sand itself, this joyous look at the ordinary pleasures of a family trip to the shore is, pure and simple, a day at the beach. From her first sight of the glistening water to the setting of the sun, the middle child (and only girl) of three siblings takes it in. “Gulls cry, dog runs by.” “Toes wriggle. I giggle.” Duke’s bright visuals combine paint and printmaking, and range from panoramas to close-ups of nail polish and tattoos.
32 pp. Child’s Play. $17.99. (Ages 5 to 7)
Jennifer Krauss is the children’s books editor for the Book Review.
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