The Storm

Miyakoshi’s (The Tea Party in the Woods) classically drafted charcoal drawings portray reality and dream with equal care as a storm threatens to upend a family’s planned trip to the beach. The child who narrates gazes out the window anxiously. His teacher has warned her class to go straight home—a bad storm is coming. His mother says that they can go to the beach next week instead. “I don’t want to go next week. I want to go tomorrow,” he thinks. As the storm gathers power (“All through dinner, the rain beats hard against the shutters”), his fear mounts; bed seems like the best place to be. There the setting shifts, and the boy appears at the prow of an enormous ship equipped with powerful fans to drive away the storm. He climbs into the crow’s nest with the family’s cat, and the ship, its work done, sails off into the sky. The next morning, miraculously, blue sky greets him out the window. It’s the boy’s conquest of fear through the power of his own imagination that gives the story its impact. Ages 3–7. (Apr.)