Boats: Speeding! Sailing! Cruising!

by Patricia Hubbell, Megan Halsey (Illustrator), Sean Addy (Illustrator)

Overview

Tugboats! Yachts! Sailboats! Air carriers! Canoes! Fishing boats! Barges! Ferries! Ocean liners! Cruise ships! and many other boats move across the pages of this book. Jump aboard and have a good time!

Patricia Hubbell introduces the fifth installment to her popular series featuring “things that go!” Sean Addy and Megan Halsey portray a variety of boats using vibrant clip art, etchings, and original drawings. What a perfect gift for anyone who loves sailing the ocean blue!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780761455240
Publisher:	Amazon Publishing
Publication date:	01/05/2012
Pages:	32
Sales rank:	1,022,104
Product dimensions:	8.70(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.50(d)
Lexile:	300L (what's this?)
Age Range:	4 - 6 Years

About the Author

Patricia Hubbell is the author of ten books of poetry for children, including Boo! Halloween Poems and Limericks as well as Trucks: Whizz! Zoom! Rumble! Her poems appear in numerous anthologies. She lives in Easton, Connecticut.

Megan Halsey and Sean Addy live in Pennsylvania. Ms. Halsey also illustrated Trains: Steaming! Pulling! Huffing!

Editorial Reviews

Hubbell here reprises the format used in her previous titles on airplanes, trains, trucks, and cars, and that's fine, because when an approach works, it works. Although the many types of boats and ships are pretty much rattled off in a litany, the descriptive rhymed couplets supply plenty of bounce, and the mixed-media compositions, incorporating everything from painting to vintage clip art, are charmingly loopy. Viewers peek through portholes at "boats for families and their pets./Trawlers with enormous nets," check out the cutaway of a houseboat, chuckle at a double-decker ferry shuttling commuter fish to work, and cheer as "fighting ships of the U.S. Navy/plow through seas, wild and wavy" in a vertical spread. Renderings of the water craft are literal enough to satisfy the information hunger of a listening audience, yet clever and sophisticated enough to tickle the adults who will be called upon for repeat readings. Fill the bathtub, rally the plastic fleet, and prepare to weigh anchor.

The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

*STARRED REVIEW * The trio who has already taken on trains and planes now turns to boats with wonderful, whimsical results. All kinds of boats are here: "Yachts with flags both fore and aft. / Dory. Dinghy. Shell. Raft.” The tight, surprisingly informative rhyming text works so well because it pairs with art that shows off each of these boats to best advantage. The fun part comes in the way the design and the mixed-media art—original drawings, vintage clip art, cartoons, and historical-style paintings—come together. A horizontal spread reveals the inside of a cabin cruiser, from the deck to the head. Turn the page (and the book) and a vertical spread displays different vessels floating on top of an ocean full of the fish. A particularly inventive spread uses a fraying map as background and shows a four-mast ship inside a bottle. With so much to see, boat lovers will want to look at this more than once, and their parents will be happy to oblige with another reading.

Booklist

PreS-Gr 1

Hubbell offers another enjoyable vehicle romp in the vein of Airplanes (2008), Trains (2005), and Cars (2006, all Marshall Cavendish). Here she looks at all manner of floating transportation, from dinghies to aircraft carriers and everything in between. The rhyme and rhythm flow well, making this fun to read aloud. "Liner. Cruise ship. Tropical shore./Down the gangplank. Let's explore!" She includes terms for parts of a sailing ship and also for rooms on a boat. The latter is illustrated with a cutaway picture with fun details for youngsters to search. Halsey and Addy again provide lively mixed-media artwork. The nautical theme is played up well, with several pictures framed by portholes or ship's wheels. There's a retro feel to the illustrations, enhanced with vintage clip art, hand-drawn images, and old papers. This title will appeal to young vehicle fans.-Laura Stanfield, Campbell County Public Library, Ft. Thomas, KY

School Library Journal