The Boat

Ward is known as an illustrator of exceptional talent, but she is a fine writer too and here she allows her text to be visualised by another artist, Ian Andrew. It's a variation on the Noah theme, a great flood, a boat, an old man and his animals. A village is perched on a hill that looks across to another hill where only the strange old man and his beasts live. The occupants of the two hills live in mutual suspicion but one young boy from the village warms to the old man and his flock. And it is the boy who saves the day as the rains arrive, turning the hill-tops into islands and threatening to wash away the animals. This is a gentle tale of the breaking down of barriers between people and communities. The book is designed and produced to the usual Templar high standards. Andrew's grainy pencil drawings are embellished with the minimum of colour that is economically distributed. The heavy directional pencil shading can be a little overbearing but the book delivers a powerful and poetic message.