The Voyage
K-Gr 2—Originally published in Norway, this offering opens with the cryptic sentences, "Maybe one day you have to leave. And you are blown so far that you forget who you are and where you came from." What purports to be a story about knowing oneself and adapting to change will likely leave young readers scratching their heads. The central character, a brown duck, is blown far from home and lands in the woods where, initially, he sits down calmly and eats his lunch. But as time passes and nothing happens, he begins to wander around and asks a fly, a fish, and a mouse, "Do you know who I am?" Because they are different species, he cannot understand their answers, so he sits down on a rock and cries. Finally, along comes another duck who says, "You are who you are," and suddenly the brown duck understands everything and can speak to anyone, even after the wind inevitably returns and blows his new friend away. The hand-drawn and digitally colored illustrations in muted woodland tones are the best part of this book and bring at least a modicum of humor and charm to the heavy-handed text. Simple layered shapes representing trees and rocks are placed against a pale backdrop like paper cutouts, while the graphically rendered animals have a flat, modern quality that allows interesting details to shine. This book would benefit from being entirely wordless, allowing these approachable characters to tell a much more straightforward tale of feeling lost and being found through small acts of friendship. Unfortunately, the words just get in the way.—Teri Markson, Los Angeles Public Library