22 SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2020LIKE MANY GREAT19th-century novels, Pe-
ter Van den Ende’s “The Wanderer” begins
with the birth of the main character, who
quickly sets off on a series of extraordinary
adventures. Our hero meets many colorful
characters and experiences great trials
and setbacks, as well as violence and de-
spair. But at the end, our hero — battered
and exhausted — is transformed. But the
hero of “The Wanderer” is a paper boat,
and there is almost no language at all.
Instead, we have 96 pages of black-and-
white pen-and-ink drawings. The technical
aspect of the work is mind-boggling, espe-
cially the masterly crosshatching. Staring
at the images, I couldn’t stop imagining
Van den Ende, pen in hand, drawing each
line, one after the other, creating work that
seems to defy the passage of time, and all
known resources of patience and imagina-
tion. Imagine Shaun Tan having an aquatic
love child with Edward Gorey, from a fam-
ily tree that includes Tim Burton, Salvador
Dalí and Jacques Cousteau, and you’ll be-
gin to get the idea... but not quite.
I reread the book several times before I
tried to write about it. The plot, as outlined
above, begins with a young sailor and a
mysterious black-clad figure with a cres-
cent-moon-shaped head. They work to-
gether (like parents?) to fold a large piece
of paper into the shape of a boat, which they
set to sea. The paper boat almost immedi-
ately becomes an object of curiosity to vari-
ous sea creatures. But the boat itself,
which, being a boat, has no face (and no
name or gender), seems sentient, and full
of its own curiosity. Eyeless, it somehow
looks right back at everything.
Van den Ende, in an interview about the
book, talks about the importance of brav-
ery, and what the boat is feeling, yet in the
book he never tells us what those feelings
are. Instead, we are given the opportunity
to experience what the boat experiences.
In this way we are able to feel what the boat
might be feeling. Le bateau, c’est nous.
What type of journey is this paper boat
on, exactly? Well, that’s hard to say, and it’s
probably best for you to find out for your-
self. But I’ll tell you there is danger, wonder,
magic, surprise and awe. There are sea
monsters and pearl divers. There’s the
threat from pollution and an environmental
disaster. There’s a submarine, which, if you
look closely, you’ll see is actually powered
by, and completely filled up with, a single
gigantic fish. There’s a massive glowing
shelf of ice in the middle of a dark ocean
that elicited an actual gasp from me when I
turned the page to discover it. Why? Was it
the solidity of the thing? The way it ema-
nated light? The fact that it had more of the
white paper visible and unbroken than any
single drawing that had appeared before
it? I’m not sure.
The few words I could find in the entire
book were the names written on the sides of
gigantic ships the paper boat comes in con-
tact with during its voyage. I Googled all of
these unrecognizable, strange-sounding
words, and each one turned out to be some-
thing very real, and they each expanded on
the world of the book. Some were Latin
words, some were the genera of whales or
giant squids, and two, intriguingly, turned
out to be 19th-century illustrators who
drew pictures for Jules Verne’s “20,000
Leagues Under the Sea.”
This is Van den Ende’s debut as a book-
maker. It was first published in the Nether-
lands and has begun appearing in other
countries around the world. According to
the publisher, Van den Ende works as a na-
ture guide in the Cayman Islands, which I
can’t say is completeely surprising to me.
I’d love to go for a walk with him and havehim tell me about the world around us, to
hear how the sense of wonder that infuses
his images comes through in his language.
With “The Wanderer” filling my
thoughts, I recently stumbled upon a video
interview with Maurice Sendak in which he
talks about his love for the visionary poet
and artist William Blake. In the video,
Sendak says: “I can’t figure out what it is... what draws me to him so much... be-
cause I don’t understand him.... I don’t
know what the hell he’s talking about. But I
love him. Like, if I were religious, I would
feel that way about whatever. He’s an illus-
trator, I am an illustrator. He illustrates po-
ems — his own poems and mythical dream
poems. I guess it’s his profound belief in
something. It sounds kind of idiotic, but I
believe him. I believe in his passion.”
I love Van den Ende’s passion, and I won-
der what he might want us to take away
from his book. Here’s my guess: Go out and
explore. Don’t be afraid to set off into the
unknown. Love the natural world and treat
it with respect because the challenges are
worth it, and in the end you will be trans-
formed. Yes, danger lurks out there, but so
do treasures and magic and wonder, and
there’s a good chance someone is waiting to
welcome you home. I know it might sound
crazy, but I believe him.
Though its title makes it sound like an
antique guide for nocturnal sailors, Dave
Eggers and Annie Dills’s “The Lights &
Types of Ships at Night” is as wonder-filled,
in its own way, as “The Wanderer.” Here,
the wonder is firmly rooted in the real
world. After a brief introduction in which
our attention is brought to familiar words
like “ships,” “the sea,” “night” and “beauty,”
the narrator asks, “But did you realize that
of all the world’s most beautiful sights,
there is nothing more beautiful than a ship
and its lights on the sea at night?” Say that
sentence out loud. It will give you a good
sense of the hypnotic, wavelike rhythm of
Eggers’s text. “This is true. This is a factual
book,” the narrator declares, and for the
rest of the story we chase the idea of beauty
across the world, ship by ship, culture by
culture, light by light. Every time the narra-
tor seems to find the most beautiful exam-
ple, another ship pops up and off we go.
Each of Dills’s double-page images shows
us a glowing, soft-focused wonder, illuminat-
ed like the otherworldly multicolored extrav-
aganza at the climax of Steven Spielberg’s
“Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”
This all continues until it’s grown late,
and we are tired, and we find ourselves at
home (well, at home in a place that’s appro-
priate for this story), where we can re-
assess the true meaning of beauty and hap-
piness.
But before you float off, this book offers
two surprises you should be on the lookout
for. The first involves the cover, which of-
fers much more than meets the eye. The
second involves all the tiny type on the
copyright page at the end, which I highly
encourage you to read. It will make you im-
mediately want to go back and look once
more through the entire book. Turns out we
weren’t alone on the journey. Isn’t that com-
forting to know? 0BRIAN SELZNICKis the author and illustrator of
“The Invention of Hugo Cabret” and “Won-
derstruck.”
From “The Wanderer.”Children’s Books
THE WANDERER
By Peter Van den Ende
96 pp. Levine Querido. $21.99.
(Ages 8 and up)
THE LIGHTS & TYPES OF SHIPS AT NIGHT
Written by Dave Eggers
Illustrated by Annie Dills
32 pp. McSweeney’s. $18.99.
(Ages 6 to 10)
By BRIAN SELZNICK
Undreamed Waters, Unexpected Shores
From “The Lights & Types of Ships at Night.”