Blue Boat

May 23, 2016
Hamilton and Petrone follow Red Truck and Yellow Copter with the story of Blue Boat, an anthropomorphic tugboat with a sweet smile and a female captain at the helm. Receiving a distress call from a family stranded on a red sailboat, Blue Boat and the captain attempt to save the day before a brewing storm makes the waters impassible. Petrone's smooth, chunky shapes evoke the feeling of bathtub toys, counterbalancing the growing tension. Hamilton, meanwhile, creates a pleasing mix of rhyme, alliteration, and sound effects: "Ding! Ding! Ding!/ Decks awash!/ Clouds churn black./ Rescue vessels/ must... turn... back.../ all but Blue Boat." Readers who are entertaining dreams of captaining a ship someday will celebrate the brave efforts of this "rough, tough tugboat." A board book edition is available simultaneously. Ages 2â5. Author's agent: Erin Murphy, Erin Murphy Literary. Illustrator's agent: Gail Gaynin, Morgan Gaynin.

March 15, 2016
A tugboat rescues a sailing family in distress in this picture book. Although the premise of the story appears to be simple and harmless--anthropomorphized Blue Boat responds to a mayday call from a family on their damaged sailboat ("Missing rudder, broken fin-- / wild nor'easter blowing in!"), thereby saving the day--it nonetheless raises disturbing questions. Unaddressed is how the sailboat came to sustain the major damage of losing its rudder and breaking its keel, why the family is out sailing when a nor'easter is coming, and, on a visual note, why the adults aren't wearing life preservers. It's hard not to conclude that the sailing family has made some pretty irresponsible decisions, and so the fundamental storyline sours, at least for readers who know sailing. While the illustrations are bright and attractive, some are inaccurate. Cutters, mentioned on a double-page spread, are a type of sailboat with more than one headsail, but the illustration shows sloops, and a mooring line should be tied to a cleat on a sailboat's deck, not to the lifeline as shown (although as an irresponsible decision, it stays true to the story). Making matters even worse, the clueless sailing family is multiracial (light-skinned mom, dark-skinned dad), and Blue Boat's captain is white--that she is also a woman does not redeem the story from white-savior symbolism. Sinks. (Picture book. 2-5)

COPYRIGHT(2016) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

May 1, 2016

PreS-Gr 1-When a family's sailboat breaks down on a stormy day, a tug named Blue Boat is called to the rescue. "Missing rudder, /broken fin-/wild nor'easter/blowing in!" The smiling vessel serenely chugs across the choppy water toward a sailboat carrying adults, children, and a dog, all wide-eyed with terror. The boat's red and blue stand out brilliantly against the flat grays of the water and sky, but there is little of visual interest to those who aren't die-hard tugboat fans. The minimal, rhyming text struggles to recall Watty Piper's The Little Engine That Could but is marred by a limping meter and peculiar word choices. Readers are likely to be confused by lines like "Raise the bridge, /tender crew-/rescue boats/coming through!"

Copyright 2016 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.