THE WHALE, THE SEA AND THE STARS

Home and away with Gerda the whale.

While many children’s books follow a home-away-home structure, this story begins with Gerda and her brother, Lars, home in the ocean with their parents, and it concludes with the siblings in a new home, away from where they began. Lars, as the elder sibling, leaves first, and Gerda departs after memorizing “an old whale song” her mother sings. It begins, “Little one, you are born of the stars and the sea,” and concludes, “Trust your heart: it will sing when you find your true home.” The four-stanza song is rather long and representative of the text-heavy book, originally written in Czech by Kavecky after a story idea by Macho. The pacing drags as Gerda interacts with one marine animal after another on her journey, with the final page belatedly arriving on the back pastedown endpaper. Before reaching this inelegantly designed conclusion, a plot point undermines the central message of following one’s heart to find happiness when a wise narwhal gives Gerda the same advice he’d given to another young whale and tells her to go to “warmer waters, then east.” Gerda takes this external direction and finds Lars in a “beautiful bay” with many other whales. The digital illustrations, while pleasing to the eye, with rounded forms and rich color, are redundant of the belabored text.

Won’t make a splash.