Celebrated Argentinian paper engineer Gérard Lo Monaco (The Little Prince; Moby-Dick; The Small World of Paper Toys) outdoes himself in A Sea Voyage, a pop-up book that is both a cheerful rhyming maritime adventure about two sailors and their dog and a marvelous pop-up gallery of boats of all shapes and sizes.
The story begins "Our little ship bobs on the sea,/ There's room for two and Dog makes three./ A pilot boat passes as we set sail,/ It drives on bravely through the gale." The lovely and dramatic pop-up scene shows a three-dimensional "little ship" bobbing in the foreground of a tempestuous ocean. Peer inside it to see a wee man with a striped shirt and tall hat, a woman in a blue gown, and a shaggy dog's head. In the background, cut-out waves toss a big pilot boat, described in the caption as "The Madeleine-Jeanne, the last Dundee pilot boat to serve the Île de Groix, France, built in Lorient in 1922." And then: oh no! A storm! And "Dog overboard! Our ship's in trouble,/ Call a lifeboat on the double!" (An actual elastic string connects a red-sailed late 19th-century English lifeboat to the life preserver that's tossed to the poor pup.) The jolly adventure rolls along: the dog is rescued, the skies clear, a big black whale breaches, the little ship chases an ocean liner for fun, and a lightship guides the trio safely to land.
Anyone would appreciate Lo Monaco's masterful paper engineering, but fans of all things nautical and nice will be over the moon for A Sea Voyage. --Karin Snelson, children's & YA editor, Shelf Awareness