The Wanderer

As the boat fades away, a human figure materializes, adorned with images from the voyage—including the paper boat. As the figure encounters another at the doorway, readers are left to their own conjurations. Marvelously engrossing—a triumph.

Dutch artist Van den Ende follows a mysterious paper boat on a surreal, at times oppressive-feeling journey across the world's oceans. Wordless, closely worked black-and-white spreads conjure an alternative Earth whose reefs hold strange life-forms. The paper boat--it's as tall as a person (or are the people as small as the boat?)--is folded and launched from a galleon by a fair-haired human and a horned, caped figure. On its voyage, the paper craft encounters monstrous sea creatures, icebergs, murky depths illuminated by sea life, and more. Approaching a drilling rig that pumps poison into the air, it takes a bullet while sea birds drop out of the sky, dead. The black caped figure and attendant bright-eyed creatures intervene. At last, the paper boat arrives at the harbor of a surreal port city, where a final reunion leaves still another mystery. Charged with a current of imaginative power, Van den Ende's artwork, like an Escher drawing leaning into oceanic and naval architecture, results in a 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea sensibility and an unsettling blend of warm nostalgia and chilly futurism. Ages 8-up. (Oct.)

Wonderfully strange and strangely wonderful, Peter Van den Ende's Wanderer is an epic dream captured in superbly meticulous detail. —Shaun Tan