Mary Manning provides charming watercolour paintings featuring memorable visual characters. The old fisherman's hooked nose, flowing white beard and traditional fishing gear mark him as slightly odd yet comforting. Keoni is nearly Astro-boyesque with his clean delineated lines and sharply pointed cow-licks, adorable. With the fishing trip rendered largely in soft, natural shades of green and brown there is enough scene shifting through Keoni’s recollections, revelation and trip home to avoid a sense of unending repetition.
My oldest daughter, now five, shares Keoni’s question – though she states it differently. Life in a physical world so often leads us to look for physical answers, and thankfully God has provided them, though not always in the way we expect. This is a title that I will be re-reading with my children to reassure them of God’s existence and to remind them of the ways He makes himself known to us.
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