Once Upon a Tide

‘Down by the seashore/Bess and I/stood on the shingle/and looked at the sky.’ So begins this rhyming tale told (one verse per spread) by a small boy narrator, wherein he and his older sister build a sailing boat, prepare for a voyage complete with compass and chart purchased from Captain Bart, and set sail over the ocean to land on a small tropical island. There, having consulted Captain Bart’s map, they dig up a chest full of treasure and set sail for home chased by pirates who are headed off by a friendly whale. Safely back, the children convert their boat into a home and surrounded by a host of smiling infants and ‘singing songs/of far-off seas’ they live happily ‘for evermore’.

Mitton’s simple sea shanty with just four short lines per double spread reads aloud like a dream and leaves plenty of room for Young’s illustrations to explore the wonder of the sea, the shore and the world of imaginative play and invention of young children. There is room too, for young audiences to lose themselves among the stripy stones, starfish, shells and their own imaginations.