When You Leave a Sandcastle…

Wordless picture book Sea of Dreams by Dennis Nolan is a beautiful work of art that draws you in from its cover with a boat on the crest of a wave and doesn’t let you go until the last page’s sandcastle.  Published in 2011 by Roaring Brook Press, this book is aimed at children ages 4-7, but anyone interested in art and its capacity to tell stories will delight in its pages.  The pictures tell the story of a young girl who builds a sandcastle on the beach and the tiny family who must vacate that sandcastle at night when the tide comes in. The seagull present throughout the story, the return of the little girl to build a taller sandcastle, the light on again at the end of the story…all of these elements leave the reader wondering what happens to the little family, and the lack of text enables the reader to come up with her own interpretation.  Both the story’s realistic and imaginative elements, such as mermaids riding seahorses, are rendered in vibrant, richly saturated hues capable of drawing a reader of any age into this imaginative look at what happens after you head home from a day at the beach, the sandcastle that you built still standing.