Oh! Look, A Boat!

Oh! Look, A Boat!, a book full of rich, chalky illustrations, introduces readers to a mouse going on an unplanned voyage of exploration. The eager hero of the story has found a red boat on the edge of the water near his little stump house. Curious, he climbs aboard, although the boat looks a little less than seaworthy. (It appears to have been made by folding a piece of paper origami-style.)

Mouse rocks on the water, daydreaming, until he realizes that he is sailing rapidly down the river.

The mouse stomped his foot and ordered the boat to
take him back. But the boat did not answer, it did not even
slow down. In fact, it went faster and faster away from his home.

Oh, no! There are rapids here! And a waterfall! And finally, the open ocean. Out in the harbor the little red boat is dwarfed by liners and tankers and yachts. It keeps on going.

The boat sailed farther and farther and farther
until everything was sky and everything was sea.

Everything is sky and sea in this spread, with the boat a tiny bright blot on a swath of featureless light blue and white that stretches out to reach all four edges of the book.

Coming out of this foggy world, the mouse and his boat experience adventure upon adventure, sharing ice-bound waters with penguins in the Antarctic, gliding past an ‘island’ that turns out to be a whale and encountering a ship swarming with rabbit pirates. At every turn of the page, readers can see someone or something exclaiming, “Oh! Look, a boat!

The boat sails on with the mouse, never touching land, through a storm-tossed night and another mist-filled day.

But as the sun began to rise, the fog began to fade.
And fade, until the mouse was not lost. He was…
“Oh! Look! Home!”

…where the mail has accumulated on the ground around the door and a cozy resting place awaits. The end of the book sees the little red boat still bobbing at the water’s edge and the mouse’s friend Badger making his own discovery.

“Oh! Look, a boat!”

The wonderfully lively illustrations have been executed by Sheridan College graduate Andrew J. Ross whose work has largely been in film animation. They are full of simply-drawn shapes that carry the text, with lots of movement and drama. One page shows the mouse silhouetted against a white background flying over the waterfall, the red boat in midair beside him and the single word ROAR! on the opposite page. Ross has been able to capture an amazing number of expressions on the mouse’s face with just two black dots for eyes and a few tension lines.
A satisfying book for reading one-on-one or with a group.

Oh! Look, A Boat! was originally published by Editions Amaterra in France in 2023 as Oh! Regarde, un Bateau!