Sea of Dreams (review)

In this wordless picture book, a little girl builds an impressive sandcastle at the beach, leaving it behind regretfully as the sun sets and the tide encroaches. Closeups then reveal inhabitants in one of the castle's towers, a family that flees their flooded home in a small sailboat dwarfed by the huge waves. One of the kids falls overboard but is quickly rescued by seahorse-riding mermaids, who return the youngster to the boat; following a guiding seagull, who's had a beady eye on the proceedings from the start, they land on an island where they encounter other little people and where they're clearly making their home. Meanwhile, back on the beach, the girl builds another sandcastle under the eye of the same watchful gull, the tide rolls in again, and a light going in the tower suggests that another boatload of small inhabitants is readying for sea. The plot's somewhat confusing, since the island the family lands on doesn't seem like a happily conclusive destination, and the here-we-go-again ending seems to suggest that new people come into being every time the girl builds a castle, which undermines the specialness of the featured little voyaging family. The fantastical story is otherwise engaging, though, with an echo of David Wiesner in its use of fanciful elements in a real-world scenario. Stylistically, the illustrations make excellent use of their double-page-spreads with a multitude of sweeping horizontals that emphasize the wide-open sea spaces and the expanse of the foaming teal waters; there's an enticing realism in the sleek detailing, especially of the underwater denizens, that gives the fantasy an appealing sense of possibility. Kids drawn to the mystical minieature possibilities of the Borrower-esque in dollhouses and such will immediately appreciate the possibilities here.