This beautifully designed and intelligently produced retelling of the flood expands the bounds of bookmaking. Illustrated by Joydeb Chitrakar (Tsunami) in the Bengali Patua–style of scroll painting, the story of Noah and the flood literally folds out like a giant mural between hard covers and tucks snugly into an attractive slipcase.
Each "page" may be read like a book by turning its accordion folds. But the book's true genius comes to light when it's laid out end to end. Each individual scene connects to the larger story of the flooding of the world and the receding of the waters to begin a new life. Gita Wolf (Do!) writes with the voice of a true storyteller. Chitrakar portrays Noah and his wife Na'mah building the ark together, as fish float by on a calm river. In a perfectly engineered shift, as soon as the reverse side of the accordion fold begins, with the animals herded aboard the ark, the rain arrives in a gray sheet. As the rain continues for 40 days, water sweeps away the trees, people and animals as if they are sleeping comfortably. The dove brings back the olive branch ("an offering of peace, a sign of trust from God"), and the author makes their last act "to set the creatures they had nurtured free."
With a text that pays homage to a time-honored oral tradition in a mural-like sequence of interconnected scenes that calls to mind Egyptian scrolls and the Bayeux tapestry, The Enduring Ark is a testament to what great bookmaking can do. --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness