Voyage

In his first picture book, Collins, a former U.S. poet laureate, uses one long, incantatory sentence to describe the way a child enters the world of a book and loses himself in it. Newcomer Romagna paints a dark-haired boy who sets out in a wooden dinghy, hoists the sail, and catches the wind. “And when he loses sight of land,” Collins writes, “the boat becomes a book/ which the boy begins to read... and when he has finished reading, the boy becomes the book.” A pirate with an eye patch brandishes a cutlass; the boy raises his own cutlass, which evaporates like water, taking the pirate with it; then, as the full moon rises and leaves a trail of light along the waves, the boy greets a friendly dolphin. It reads less like a story for children and more like adult nostalgia for a boyhood past, and Romagna’s aquatic landscapes fare better than her uneven portraits of the story’s young hero. Still, the poem’s lulling rhythms make it a fine bedtime readaloud. Ages 4–up. (Sept.)