An Ocean World

Au moyen des dessins a la plume et des aquarelles, Peter Sis raconte l'histoire d'une baleine qui est devenue trop grande pour attirer les gens a l'attraction touristique Ocean World. Tout d'un coup, elle est laissee toute seule dans les eaux salees! Comme toujours, l'auteur-artiste se sert des couleurs distinctes lorsqu'il raconte des incidents durs a avaler. Ainsi n'y a-t-il de rouge dans le livre qu'ou la baleine nage dans une piscine des enfants ou joue avec un appareil de sauvetage ou parle avec l'auteur en dirigeable. Mais que veut-il au debut lorsqu'il dessine un elephant tout pres d'une pyramide sur le sable tout rouge d'un desert? Avec ou sans paroles, les livres du Mr Sis sont toujours charmants, interessants et un peu mysterieux!

In the book AN OCEAN WORLD, pen and ink and watercolor drawings tell of a whale released from Ocean World for a new life in the sea. Along the way, Peter Sis indulges his gentle sense of humor. Thus, the whale finds whale-like shapes in a cloud and a shipwreck. She communicates with a school of white fish where one black fish is present, reminiscent of the whimsical sweater of a black sheep in the midst of white sheep popularized by Princess Diana. Also, the whale recognizes whale-like activities in a palm tree topped isle and a water-venting fireboat. Sometimes, she basks and spouts, just as people romp, with the setting sun and the fully risen moon.AN OCEAN WORLD might be the log book that Christopher Columbus and Jan Welzl (about whom the same author/illustrator wrote in FOLLOW THE DREAM and A SMALL TALE FROM THE FAR FAR NORTH) would write as whales. For Sis tracks the trek of all three: Columbus across the Atlantic Ocean, Welzl across the former Soviet Union and far northwestern North America, and the whale perhaps around the world.Sis differentiates big water bodies by colors, moods and weathers. Looking at the different seas, I try to imagine what route the whale takes. Is the stormy black plate for the Black Sea, known for its dark color and scary weather? Are the two sunsets over the Red and Yellow Seas? When the whale spouts back in sonar to a submarine, is the water a black green to show such great depths as the Marianas Trench?Sis knows how to tell a story just through the drawings. One of his greatest talents is choosing colors to tell us what is going on. In AN OCEAN WORLD, he charmingly uses red in the taller tale scenes: the whale growing up in a kiddie pool, playing with a toy lifesaver, communicating with what is probably the author in a dirigible with the initials PS, finding the whale love of her life.In RAINBOW RHINO, also by Sis, the rhinoceros finds a lasting friendship with birds. Likewise, the whale finds a whale mate. Through the expanses we see the whale bravely exploring, I like to think of the book as having the same message as Carl Sagan's CONTACT: it is love that fills the vast reaches of the universe.Also, this whale of a tale sits comfortably, and with a happier ending, in a niche with such ecologically concerned classics as THE LORAX by Dr. Seuss. Sis begins with a postcard to his family, and he draws an ecologically incongruous stamp: an elephant with a pyramid on red desert sand. Maybe he is telling us that the greatest works of humankind and nature daily fight destruction and extinction. The inside of the front cover ghosts a whale in the sky over a big city scene, maybe reminding us of the whale products we have used to get to the modern industrial age.AN OCEAN WORLD also harks back to such classics as THE LITTLE ENGINE THAT COULD. For we see the whale going from an easier albeit less private life filled with crowds and water pails to days on end on her own. She learns