Who wants an old canoe? As The Red Canoe begins, it seems that no one does. But Anne Yvonne Gilbert's picture book ultimately proves soaringly hopeful, intimating that even human-made objects can, like aspects of nature, be part of "the endless cycle of birth and rebirth."
The story is told from the perspective of the canoe itself, "its fragile ribs grown brittle with age, its once bright paint faded, forgotten." From its roost in a boathouse, the canoe recalls the long-ago summer day when it arrived at a lake house, where a boy lovingly used it. A routine developed: each fall the boy would repair the canoe and store it in the boathouse, and each spring he would carry it "into the warm sun, remove its canvas cover, and wake it from its long sleep." But then everything changed: "A war was being fought in faraway lands," and the boy--a man now--doesn't return. The canoe is ignored for years until one day, the boathouse door creaks open....
The Red Canoe covers emotional territory reminiscent of that in picture books like The Old Truck--something is outgrown, abandoned, given new life--but Canoe's mesmeric illustrations are all its own. Veteran illustrator Gilbert (Robin Hood: The Classic Adventure Tale), here making her debut as an author, has earned a reputation for elaborately dense art that casts folklore and fairy tales in an idiosyncratic light; in Canoe, the scenes she creates, dusted with old-timey motifs, are no less enchanting for being earthbound. --Nell Beram, freelance writer and YA author