The Fisherman The Whale

Jessica Lanan’s dreamy and dramatic watercolor paintings bring to life a wordless story about wonder in the natural world. A fisherman takes his son for a trip out on the water. When they encounter a whale entangled at sea, they realize a connection that transcends the animal kingdom.

A child and a whale embark on a beautiful journey together in this lyrical, gorgeously illustrated picture book about friendship, hope, and love for the world around us in the vein of The Fisherman & the Whale and Cynthia Rylant’s Life. Where land becomes sky and sky becomes sea, I first saw the whale and the whale first saw me. A child joins a friendly whale for a magical journey of discovery. They sail the blue ocean, dance with dolphins, and tail-splash seagulls. But the child also sees an ocean filled with plastic trash. And that inspires a promise of help, for the whale and all earth’s creatures.

A boy and his father discover a whale tangled in their only fishing net. Is the whale dead? While the man worries about losing their net, the boy worries about the whale. He remembers the fear he felt when, caught in a net himself in childhood, he almost drowned before being rescued by his father. When the whale blinks an enormous eye, the boy knows that he has to try to save the creature, no matter how dangerous doing so may be. Expressive and perfectly paced, this powerful story, The Boy and the Whale, by Caldecott Medal–winner Mordicai Gerstein was inspired in part by a real-life video of a whale’s rescue, and the creature’s joyful dance through the waves after being freed.

Named a Best Book of the Year by the San Francisco Chronicle and The Times-Picayune The fascinating untold tale of Samuel Zemurray, the self-made banana mogul who went from penniless roadside banana peddler to kingmaker and capitalist revolutionary When Samuel Zemurray arrived in America in 1891, he was tall, gangly, and penniless. When he died in the grandest house in New Orleans sixty-nine years later, he was among the richest, most powerful men in the world. Working his way up from a roadside fruit peddler to conquering the United Fruit Company, Zemurray became a symbol of the best and worst of the United States: proof that America is the land of opportunity, but also a classic example of the corporate pirate who treats foreign nations as the backdrop for his adventures. Zemurray lived one of the great untold stories of the last hundred years. Starting with nothing but a cart of freckled bananas, he built a sprawling empire of banana cowboys, mercenary soldiers, Honduran peasants, CIA agents, and American statesmen. From hustling on the docks of New Orleans to overthrowing Central American governments and precipitating the bloody thirty-six-year Guatemalan civil war, the Banana Man lived a monumental and sometimes dastardly life. Rich Cohen's brilliant historical profile The Fish That Ate the Whale unveils Zemurray as a hidden power broker, driven by an indomitable will to succeed.

Whenever Burt Dow, who lives in a snug little house on the Maine coast, sets out to sea, his pet giggling gull goes along. But this time, it will take all his might and some plain old ingenuity to save him and the gull from a raging storm.

Peg, a big strapping seven-year-old lass who has caught everything else in the sea, joins the crew of the whaling ship Viper and sets out to catch herself a whale. Full-color illustrations.

Michael, a young boy growing up on the tropical island of Rose Town, has been saving up for his own fishing boat for years. But when a terrible storm wrecks his home, Michael is forced to take a job working for a rich, mysterious newcomer named Spargo. Spargo asks Michael to search for one thing in the deep waters around Rose Town - whales . . .