We'll All Go Sailing

by Maggee Spicer, Kim LaFave (Illustrator), Richard Thompson

Nominee, Governor General's Literary Awards Children's Literature - Illustration, 2001

Richard Thompson and Maggee Spicer join forces with Kim La Fave in this colourful tour of the seas. The young narrator and his friends, Maggee and Jesse, travel to a myriad of places to look at sea life that is every colour of the rainbow. Children will delight in the pink octopus, the blue manatee, and the orange barracuda, to name but a few.

Richard Thompson and Maggee Spicer have created a rhythmic poem (in the same vein as their ealier collaboration, ) that will encourage the very youngest of new readers. Together with Kim La Fave's bold and playful illustrations, this delightful poem will . . .

make a fine book

To show what we'll see,

When we all go sailing

On the rainbow seas.

Genres: Picture Books

32 pages, Hardcover

First published October 7, 2000

Reviews

[Richard Thompson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Note: "Date I finished..." = "Date added..."

This was the first of our three "We'll All Go..." books, published by Fitzhenry & Whiteside with illustrations by Kim LaFave.

Someone at F&W decided to add the "paper engineering" feature — on each page, the verse asks the question "And what will see, In the sea, we three?" (Each sea being a different colour...) and the reader has to lift a flap to discover with kind of creatures were seen there.

When you were sailing with F&W it was often hard to tell who the captain of the boat was, and you had to be prepared to for sudden course changes. This was a case in point. Days before the book was supposed to go to print, Kim LaFave sent F&W an "illustrator's photo" showing himself and his family with against an appropriately aquatic backdrop. F&W already had a file of photos of us from previous books, but when they saw Kim's photo they decided that they needed — by Friday — a photo of Maggee, Jesse and me in a similar setting. We didn't and don't live by the sea and didn't and don't own any maritime gear. We scrambled about and borrowed life-jackets and paddles and got a friend to take a picture of us against a sea-blue wall in our living room.

[Oznasia · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a wonderful book with so much in it for a child to discover over successive readings that they will no doubt demand.

First of all it introduces colours. The three characters explore the sea of many different colours to see what they can find there. Each page has a half-page flap that reveals some creature underneath.

The poetic text is repetitive so it won't be long before your early reader is reading along with you.

There are little subplots in the illustrations that children discover all by themselves.

This is a very engaging book. Highly recommended.