The Sea-Thing Child

Kind of bleakly magical--the sea-thing child's bedraggled self hiding in an igloo of stones and then wandering out, the odd creatures encountered, the world of sea and sand made me think of our distant ancestors crawling out of the primordial and looking around on an endless beach for the first time (I assume that's how it worked), and burying the traumatic memories of what happened underwater. The characters were peculiar in a kind of a ,i>Labyrinthy or ly way. I liked it although I'm not sure my son's literary palate is evolved enough to get it yet.

Hoban has done a lot of very interesting stuff. Some I love, some I don't want to go near.

So far I'm liking this, as the last line on the first page is "He was nothing but a little draggled heap of fright." Well, actually, the first wordless spread is wonderful art, too, and I'm excited to see the rest by Benson.
.............
Welp, alrighty then. Pretty deep & metaphorical & poetical and all. I bet some readers feel it in their hearts, treasure it. I can appreciate much of it, but much more is surely there. Maybe if I'd encountered it when younger. Maybe if I read it aloud, to children, several times.

Ok, I'm off to see what other reviewers think. You'll have to decide for yourself.

Glorious allegory for childhood, friendship and self-discovery. The author's son illustrated the luxurious words with peb-and-ink drawings that never show the sea-thing child and leave it to our imagination.

We also read the original that doesn't show you what the sea-thing child looks like. I preferred that edition, likely because I read it first.

No ISBN but there is an SBN on dust jacket (06-022399-5)

My daughter's rendition. This early version doesn't have an illustration of the sea-thing child so I asked her to draw what she thought it looked like.