The Books
The Wreck of the Zephyr
Hardcover, 32 pages
Published by Houghton Mifflin Books for Children (1983-03-23)
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Amazon Description
At the edge of a cliff lies the wreck of a small sailboat. How did it get there? "Waves carried it up in a storm," says an old sailor. But is it possible that waves could ever get that high? There is another story -- the story of a boy and his obsessive desire to be the greatest sailor, the story of a storm that carried the boy and his boat to a place where boats glide like gulls high above the water and not upon it. Chris Van Allsburg tells that story of the boy and his boat, the Zephyr, in words and haunting, full-color pastel paintings. His sailboats sail the night sky with the stars in pictures so vivid that the reader can almost hear the wind in the sails. Here is a work of unusual artistry that will enchant readers of all ages for many years to come.One Potato Review
Van Allsburg at his dreamy best. This author wears his enigma too heavily sometimes, and the result can be kind of unnerving; it’s hard to know where to look, never mind what the heck is going on in the story. Think of the glassy expressions in The Polar Express; it wasn’t just the movie where something seemed missing. You hardly get a glance of the faces of these characters - the boy sailor who is determined to overcome gravity, and the mysterious inhabitants of a reef-sheltered island where he washes ashore - and the dodge is surprisingly effective: a beautifully told fable where the words do their share of the flying.
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