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Fog Island


Fog Island
by Tomi Ungerer
Phaidon, 2013.  Unpaged.  Picture Book

     In a book dedicated to "Ireland and all the wonderful people who welcomed us here," the incomparable Tomi Ungerer tells the story of Fog Island, a mysterious, rocky outcropping where few have journeyed and none returned. "Finn and Cara were brother and sister.  They lived by the sea in the back of beyond."  One day they ventured out in the small boat, a curragh, their father had fashioned for them. Blown off course, they thought themselves lost, but drifted at last into a small inlet--on Fog Island.  There they meet the master of the island, the Fogmaker himself, who cares for them kindly, shares the secrets of his craft, and then disappears the next day, as the children take themselves back out to sea, and to rescue. This beautifully atmospheric story, with pictures of such subtlety one hardly notices the magic they are working, is one of Ungerer's finest.

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