Swashby and the Sea

Swashby and the Sea
By Beth Ferry
Illustrated by Juana Martinez-Neal
Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020. Picture book.

Captain Swashby likes to be in solitude - which is why he retires to a seaside house to enjoy peace and quiet with his old friend the ocean. This is all completely interrupted when a gregarious girl and her granny move in next door -- prompting Swashby to batten down the hatches and leave decidedly un-neighborly messages of "NO TRESPASSING" and "PLEASE GO AWAY" in the sand. Which the sea fiddles with, transforming it into "SING" and "PLAY" by washing away extra letters. Swashby starts to open up a little bit, but nothing quite brings him out of his shell until the ocean carries the child away from the shore, and Swashby dives in to save her.

We love Martinez-Neal's illustrations from the 2019 Caldecott Honor Alma and How She Got Her Name and the 2020 Sibert Medal Fry Bread, and she is back again with a color palette of muted blues, beige, and turquoise that evoke the setting and reflect the character's changing emotions. Her Swashby is perfectly curmudgeonly and the unnamed girl and her granny are suitably jubilant with buoyant afros and funky, over-sized sunglasses. Get your best pirate voice ready because this beachy, friendship story demands to be read aloud - over and over.

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