Sail Away [Hardcover]

Florence McNeil (Author), David McPhail (Illustrator)

Book Description

Grade Level: P and up

Sail Away Florence McNeil illustrated by David McPhail Parents' Choice Silver Honour Award 2000 Resource Links' Year's Best 2000 Book Sense 76 Top 10 Picks Children's Literature Choice List 2001 CCBC Our Choice The captain knows how to get his boat shipshape and ready to sail. Do you? Can you step a mast, hoise a halyard, vang a boom? Pitch in with the crew, learn the lingo, and you too can sail away! A versatile author of poetry, fiction and plays, Florence McNeil has garnered a number of awards for her work for adults and children. Her novel, Catriona's Island won the Sheila Egoff prize for children's literature. She also compiled and edited the highly praised anthology of children's poetry Do Whales Jump at Night? Illustrator and author of over seventy books for children, David McPhail is beloved for his lively portraits of children, bears, pigs, moles, bunnies, puppies and a host of other two- and four-legged creatures. Other titles include The Furry Bedtime Book, The Puddle, Mole Music, Angel Pig and the Hidden Christmas and Tall in the Saddle.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

At the launch of this buoyant nautical caper, a boy dressed in a pirate costume drags a basket of stuffed animals toward a claw-footed tub, draws a bath and assembles a toy ship. McPhail's (Those Can-Do Pigs) good-natured, warm-hued pictures, which offer the artist's customary, appealing balance of old-fashioned and whimsical sensibilities, suddenly shift tack as a turn of the page reveals the now life-size animals and their pirate captain readying an actual ship for sail. McNeil's (Catriona's Island) minimal text comprises a litany of sailing terms as the motley crew (including a peg-legged crocodile, a pink elephant sporting a heart-shaped tattoo dedicated to "Mom" and a diminutive blue rabbit wearing an eye patch) pitches in to scrape the bottom, swab the decks, mend the sails and launch the craft. Once afloat, the mates tighten the shrouds, bail the bilge, hoist the halyards, etc., until, at last, they "sail away." These last words appear under the final illustration, showing the young sailor in the tub with his boat, his toy crew standing by. The author wraps up this salty sea voyage with a glossary of "Sailor Talk." Youngsters familiar with the sea and boats will be especially tickled to climb aboard and weigh the anchor. Ages 4-8. (Sept.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

Kindergarten-Grade 2-A small boy dressed in a pirate costume drags a basketful of stuffed animals into the bathroom. He unpacks a pirate ship from a box and puts it together next to the bathtub, which is obviously ready for the adventurous sail of this eccentric crew. The text then begins, just at the point where the child has apparently leaped into a swashbuckling fantasy world. He goes on to list the nautical tasks, using language familiar to any pint-sized pirate-book aficionado, as well as terms that will be less familiar but excellent for rolling appreciatively off the tongue: "thread the fairleads-vang the boom." Throughout, the colorful and comic animals, now grown to child size, are remarkably expressive in their gestures and expressions-readers are sure to remark on a pink elephant whose plump side is tattooed, sailor-fashion, with a large heart and the word "Mom." The youngster is clearly having a wonderful time and his fantasy comes full circle by the end, in which the ship, now plainly visible as a toy boat again, is being sailed by the boy (still wearing his pirate hat) in the bathtub. A concluding page explains all of the nautical terms.
Marian Drabkin, Richmond Public Library, CA
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 32 pages
• Publisher: Orca Book Publishers (January 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1551431475
• ISBN-13: 978-1551431475
• Product Dimensions: 10.3 x 8.4 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,284,743 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sailing with an Imagination, June 11, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Sail Away (Paperback)

Anyone who has been around boats knows that there is a whole separate language for boats. This book shows a little boy who can speak boat talk and who dreams of being the captain of a ship. The salty words paint a picture of an adventure--one which the illustrator joyfully interprets.

This book is a definite must for anyone in the sailing community, young or old!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sail Away, April 5, 2005

By 

D. Jackson (Katy, TX) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sail Away (Hardcover)

What book could be anything but perfect with David McPhail as the illustrator? His colorful, sublime illustrations give life to the text and create a world full of humor and delight.