Ship Ahoy!

by Peter Sís

While sitting on his living room couch that is atop a big blue rug, little Matt begins to pretend that he is on an incredible sailing adventure on the wide-open seas, yet when his mothers enters the room with the vacuum, his journey takes an unexpected turn.

Genres: Picture Books, Childrens

24 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

PETER SÍS is an internationally acclaimed illustrator, filmmaker, painter and author. Born in 1949 in Brno, Czechoslovakia, and grew up in Prague. He studied painting and filmmaking at the Academy of Applied Arts in Prague and the Royal College of Art in London. His animated work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art. He came to America in 1982, and now lives in New York's Hudson Valley with his family. Peter Sís is the first children's book artist to be named a MacArthur Fellow. In 2012 he won The Hans Christian Andersen Award.

His many distinguished books include Starry Messenger: Galileo Galilei, Tibet: Through the Red Box, Madlenka, Rainbow Rhino, The Tree of Life: Charles Darwin, The Wall: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain, and The Conference of the Birds.

Reviews

[Kaiti Pannell · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was a great wordless picture book. The first thing I noticed was that each page that were next to each other were presented as him in the present sitting on the couch and the other picture was what he was imagining. This made it super easy to follow the story. I think sometimes with wordless picture books they are hard to follow and can get confusing quickly. His imagination got more detailed as the book went on, with bigger and different kinds of ships. It started out with a simple sail boat and ended with a submarine with a lot of details. You could do a ton of different assignments with this kind of book. Some that come to mind are making your own picture book with the same kind of lay out or we could work on predicting if we were to not finish the book in one day. They could also do a write up on what details stood out to them that helped bring the story together and who in reading and writing those kind of details are important.

[Allison · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a really neat wordless book about a boy pretending on his sofa. I had fun reminiscing about my own they-say-it's-a-couch-but-I-know-it's-a-lifeboat daydreams (and who hasn't at one time pretended that their loveseat was floating above a monster-infested abyss and the only way out was taking a flying leap from the back of the couch on to "dry land"? Come on, I know I'm not the only one!), and Jordan liked figuring out how he was using his home things to pretend. I wish there'd been more of a story instead of just a series of boats, but I thought it was still cute.

[Vivian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Speaking of boats... your small-sized imaginary sailor is going to love joining the boy in this wordless picture book. He has all sorts of adventures in his very own living room as the familiar furnishings are transformed by his imagination. The rug becomes the ocean. The couch becomes a rubber raft with a paddle and then a canoe. A net transforms into a sail. A stick becomes an oar on a chinese junk and then the ship's wheel on a galleon. Suddenly he's sailing a submarine and then a big steam ship. Ahoy! what's ahead? A sea monster! Oh, it's just mother with the vacuum cleaner.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

My son picked this book out from the library last week.

This is a delightfully imaginative book. I think every kid turns a bed or a sofa into a boat and a rug into an ocean. Certainly my son had no trouble grasping that concept. And he liked the book, but not quite as much as Not A Box -- I'm OK with that.

[Nancy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Your boat-loving child may just love this as one child's imagination transforms the couch and rug and other household objects into all kinds of different boats and ships. Watch out for the sea monster at the end!

[Kelly]

Cool imagination shown by the boy. That's something the kids I babysit like to do all the time - imagine we're on a boat and fishing.

[Marilyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wordless book. Boy imagines his couch as a raft, canoe, cruise ship, asian boat, pirate ship, submarine, the vacuum becomes a sea monster. Clever.

[Kristie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wordless picture books are a great start to dialogic reading.