“Most of the time,” Michelle Cuevas writes, “they made people quite happy, for a letter can hold the treasure of a clam-hugged pearl.” Cuevas’s prose is laden with gems like that: gorgeous sentences as precious as the messages themselves. Solitary and unmoored, the title hero of the book collects bottles that bob up in the sea, then delivers the letters inside. The landscape covered in “The Uncorker of Ocean Bottles” is largely internal, but the book - the story of a lonely man whose unique job ultimately allows him to connect - travels deep. There’s a sword fight between a king and an evil warrior, a midair disaster and a submarine exploration that leads father and daughter to some cave paintings that tell a largely inscrutable back story. The elegance of the idea, which was so startling and liberating in “Journey” - that door could lead anywhere! - dissipates a little in “Return” as plot points pile up. He follows her through the door into the mythic kingdom.
A red kite on the floor prompts the father to look for his daughter. Blanketed by a wash of sepia, the scene features just a few patches of bright color, which illuminate the page like spotlights: A busy dad works at one end of the house while his daughter appears in the opposite corner, drawing an arched portal on her wall, planning her escape. A guitar and a surfboard hint at the lives above. Even the slice of the basement that’s visible reveals intriguing details. “Return” begins with a double-page view of a house in a delightfully detailed cross-section. “Return” is the final book in his wordless trilogy that began spectacularly with “Journey,” which won a Caldecott Honor, and continued with the fast-paced “Quest.” Each book follows the creative mind of a bored, imaginative child who uses an enchanted red marker to draw her way out of her room and into a land of evil warriors, a king of color and dazzling architecture. In space, at sea, in a twilight world - these books take readers on escapes so transporting it’s a pleasure to get lost.Īaron Becker’s new book, “Return,” bridges the divide between the mundane and the fantastic. Three new picture books follow the tradition. Some of the most enduring children’s books transform something ordinary - a purple crayon, a wardrobe, a red pebble - into vehicles for exhilarating journeys.
Cheese samples, the fish department and the dewy surprise of automatic misting in the produce section: Lots of marvels are packed in those prosaic aisles. For very young children, even a trip to a grocery store can be thrilling.
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