Ocean Meets Sky



 

Ocean Meets Sky is a 2017 picture book written and illustrated by Terry and Eric Fan (The Fan Brothers) and published by Simon and Schuster. 

This is the Fan Brothers' second book written and illustrated by them, their first work was The Night Gardener which I also recommend. In both of these picture books the art stands out the most, they are detailed and there is a lot to discover. In Ocean Meets Sky our main character Finn is dreaming of a surreal world where items and people from the beginning of the book have been transformed (made bigger, reinvented entirely), but it never outright states it; it's up to the reader to see where these ideas in his dream are coming from.

The story itself is kept fairly simple. Finn's grandfather passed away and Finn dreams up a surreal adventure they could have had. The art is the real star here, and it's always a pleasure to pore over The Fan Brothers' illustrations.

Review:

Ocean Meets Sky keeps the plot and characters fairly simple: Finn's Grandpa has passed away, but on what would have been Grandpa's 90th birthday Finn dreams of an adventure him and his Grandpa could have gone on. While the plot may not be the most complex, the illustrations will have the reader poring over it again and again. There are three wordless spreads in the book that allow the reader to look on and wonder, it sparks the imagination and brings the reader closer to the dreamy setting Finn has voyaged into. Those familiar with the Fan Brothers' work won't be too surprised at how beautiful the book is, their illustrations tend to be very detailed, and the subject matter often delves into imagination or the surreal as it has here and in their 2016 picture book The Night Gardener. The dustjacket and cloth cover are also quite beautiful, with something akin to gold-leaf lettering on the dustjacket and illustrations of several objects and creatures on the cloth covering of the book. The simplicity of the text, and the depth of the illustrations allow the reader to take time in the book, and for those that may be in a similar situation to Finn, losing a grandparent of loved one, they may find comfort in those pages and feel closer to them as Finn has with his Grandpa.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Science Verse by Jon Scieszka

Image
  Poetry Book Science Verse  written by Jon Scieszka and illustrated by Lane Smith. Published by Viking (2004) When the science teacher says "they can hear the poetry of science in everything" one student is cursed/gifted to hear poetry in a variety of scientific topics. Scieszka adapts many different classic children's songs (It's Raining, It's Pouring, I've Been Working on The Railroad) and nursery rhymes (Mary Had a Little Lamb, Hey Diddle Diddle) into silly science verses in this collection of science poems. Scieszka uses many classic tunes that kids would be familiar with, and the adaptations don't lose too much of the cadence of their original works. This is a follow-up work to Scieszka and Lane's 1995 book, Math Curse , and the duo have only improved here. Scieszka and Lane have collaborated on over a dozen projects, and both can provide bizarre and hilarious moments in this book and others. Smith uses mixed media here, as he did in one of their
Read more

Poetry Collection Evaluation and Findings

Image
I looked at every 6 books in the 811 section of our non-fiction (North American poetry). I first found that we have a lot of books with incorrect Dewey numbers...almost all the books I looked at were in 811.54 (North American poetry of the latter half of the twentieth century), but some were written in different centuries, and some not reviewed here but observed were from authors outside of North America. One might be inclined to simplify the children's poetry section to just 811, but then that leaves out the English (not North America) poets in 821. We also have one Spanish poetry book in 861. I don't have a great solution for this problem at the moment. I do see another problem in our collection: our collection has a lot of older titles, but not so many titles from the last ten years. I don't think we've done a great job of keeping up with new titles in the poetry section, and we often only get the breakthrough books (award winners like The Undefeated, or books that r
Read more

Guts Book Discussion

Image
  Book Discussion In my group, we talked about Raina Telgemeier's most recent graphic memoir, Guts . I prepared by reading the book, refreshing myself on some of Raina's biographical information from her website, and seeing what she is up to right now. At the moment, her art is on exhibit at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum. The exhibit, "Facing Feelings," is all about the emotions Raina is able to convey in her art. Raina's use of emanata came up in discussion, a term made up by cartoonist Mort Walker in his Lexicon of Comicana  originally to describe the squiggly lines above a character's head, but now more generically applies to all sorts of squiggles, marks and symbols in comics. We all agreed that Raina was able to convey a lot of emotion, and did focus on the facial expressions used, some like subtle shifts of the eyes, and others an aura of dread with eyes changing color and teeth clenched (big emotions here). My only expectations going i
Read more