PICTURE BOOK - Ocean Meets Sky by the Fan Brothers

Illustrated by the authors

2018, Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers

HC #17.99

40  pgs.

Goodreads rating:  4.23 - 1814 ratings

My rating: 3.5 

Endpapers:  Animal clouds

Illustrations:  Lovely, best part of the book

1^st line/s:  "Finn lived by the sea,
and the sea lived by him.
"It's a good day for sailing,"
his grandfather would have said."

My comments:  Lovely illustrations, story is a tiny bit vague, but also quite lovely.  I get stymied by little things...how can a very young boy have a 90-year old grandfather?  Might this perhaps have been his great-grandfather...but then would they have been so close?  Silly questions like that bogged me down.  So a second reading was needed and enjoyed.  I'm still not sure why I didn't like the book as much as I expected I would...

Goodreads:  Finn lives by the sea and the sea lives by him. Every time he looks out his window it’s a constant reminder of the stories his grandfather told him about the place where the ocean meets the sky. Where whales and jellyfish soar and birds and castles float.
          Finn’s grandfather is gone now but Finn knows the perfect way to honor him. He’ll build his own ship and sail out to find this magical place himself!
          And when he arrives, maybe, just maybe, he’ll find something he didn’t know he was looking for.

The Weaver - Thacher Hurd

Illustrated by Elisa Kleven
Farrar Straus Giroux, 2010
$16.99
32 pages
Rating: 5
Endpapers: Midnight blue

This is a lovely, gentle, very special book. Although the words and illustrations are rendered by two different people, they work beautifully...oh so beautifully...together.

A weaver sits above the earth, watching and weaving. She uses parts of the universe as the threads on her loom, she dyes them the colors of the morning. She weaves in friendship and family, happiness and sadness, anger and love. And as night approaches, her masterpiece complete, she spreads it across the sky and lets it gently fall and settle across the world - warming us, comforting us, and holding our memories.

"Looking down on the world,
the weaver sees
a smile on someone's face,
a hug between friends,
babies crying and then held warm
in their parents arms."

I've been an Elisa Kleven fan for a long time. I can remember reading and sharing Snowsong Whistling to my very first college class at COA. A few years ago at the Reading the World Conference at the University of San Francisco I participated in a workshop run by Elisa Kleven. I've read Ernst and Wish, Abuela and City by the Bay over and over and over. I wish the pages in her books were bigger so that I could closely examine every minute detail.

Poetry. Sheer poetry. Words and pictures alike. Every page is beautiful. This is the perfect gift for a newborn or toddler.

Thacher Hurd's website.
Elisa Kleven's website.

Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast: interviews the author and illustrator.