Blue Boat

by Kersten Hamilton, Valeria Petrone (Illustrator)

Overview

With the tremendous success of RED TRUCK in board book format and anticipation around YELLOW COPTER in board to match, we're thrilled to complete the primary-colored series about vehicles who save the day by bringing BLUE BOAT into board, too! When a family on a sailing outing gets stuck in a surprise storm, there is only one boat tough enough to handle the rocking waves and howling winds: Blue Boat! Now even the youngest readers can cheer on this "rough, tough tugboat."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780451471413
Publisher:	Penguin Young Readers Group
Publication date:	05/17/2016
Pages:	32
Product dimensions:	8.80(w) x 9.90(h) x 0.50(d)
Lexile:	AD250L (what's this?)
Age Range:	2 - 5 Years

About the Author

Kersten Hamilton is the author of over twenty-five books. She lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. BLUE BOAT is her fifth book for Viking. Visit her at kerstenhamilton.com.

Valeria Petrone has worked as an illustrator for publishers in the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, France, and her native Italy, where she now lives. Visit her at www.valeriapetrone.com.

Editorial Reviews

05/23/2016
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 2–5. Author's agent: Erin Murphy, Erin Murphy Literary. Illustrator's agent: Gail Gaynin, Morgan Gaynin. (May)

Publishers Weekly

05/01/2016
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!" VERDICT Pass on this one unless you have throngs of young tugboat fanatics clamoring for new books.—Rachel Anne Mencke, St. Matthew's Parish School, Pacific Palisades, CA

School Library Journal

2016-03-02
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)

Kirkus Reviews

Reviews for Blue Boat:

"Readers who are entertaining dreams of captaining a ship someday will celebrate the brave efforts of this 'rough, tough tugboat.'"—Publishers Weekly 

"With plenty of sound effects and opportunities for call-and-response, this will be a spirited pick for one-on-one or group storytime."—Booklist 

From the Publisher