Aska's Sea Creatures

Kelly L. Green is the co-editor of the Children’s Literature edition
of the Canadian Book Review Annual.

In his third collaboration with poet David Day, Warabé Aska has created
beautiful puzzle paintings, full of purple mountains that turn into
humpback whales and back again, seals and dolphins that use the sun for
a ball, and starfish reflecting the light of the stars in the sky. A
mermaid floats through the depths, her hair mingling with the seaweed,
and stingrays “fly like a bat beneath the sea.”

Day’s poetry complements Aska’s art beautifully, sometimes creating
puzzles of its own. Of the starfish Day writes, “You are tiny and you
shine beneath the turquoise sea. / Your watery galaxy is a small mirror
/ Held up to the stars glinting above.” I only wish that the starfish
painting and poem had composed the book’s final two-page spread, as
they reflect so beautifully the spirit of the book’s final page, on
which a whale dives and we see only its graceful tail reflected in a
mountain of orange and yellow light, while the rest of its body is
plunged into the green depths as the sun prepares to set. Another
puzzle, this painting, like the book’s first page, consists of a cone
of light created by the sun’s rays. With the red sun positioned atop
the cone in a nest of its brightest white light, the impression is
startlingly like a mountain, and is particularly reminiscent of stylized
images of Mt. Fuji. Aska’s sea links his two countries, and this book
is a love letter to all three. Highly recommended.