The Goodbye Boat
 Mary Joslin
 Illustrator Claire St. Louis Little
 (Reviewed by The Editor - Rebecca Brown)
 1998 Eerdmans Books for Young Readers, Grand Rapids, MI
  ISBN: 080285186X


Saying goodbye to someone you love is always hard. Saying goodbye when someone you love dies is perhaps the hardest thing of all.

I remember those days when I left for boarding school or to emigrate to America. I was the one leaving in those days. I was on a Goodbye Boat. Later, I stood & watched others leave for faraway places or, as is inevitable, leaving life.

Come then & join friends & family, together on hot sunny days, laughing & loving & watching life unfold.

Waving to friends sailing away as the summer season fades.

Saying goodbye & weeping, wandering lonely, hurt & lost in the dark night of mourning.

& as that season fades into another summer, remembering the love & wondering where The Goodbye Ship has gone.

Few words, rich pictures - extra-ordinarily rich pictures & a lot to think about!

For every family raising conscious children -- when grandparents & pets & friends die & go away.

A simple, passionately illustrated meditation of life & death & life.

Mary Joslin is the mother of three children & has written other books including Do the Angels Watch Close By? & The Good Man of Assisi.

Claire St. Louis Little studied at Falmouth College of Art & is currently living & working in Oxford, England.
(07/29/01)

Rebecca