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Shark and Lobster's Amazing Undersea Adventure by Viviane Schwarz (view source)
Revision as of 13:39, 14 May 2018
, 13:39, 14 May 2018no edit summary
{{infoboxinfobox2
|title=Shark and Lobster's Amazing Undersea Adventure
|author=Viviane Schwarz and Joel Stewart
|date=March 2007
|isbn=978-1406305203
|amazonukaznuk=<amazonuk>1406305200</amazonuk>|amazonusaznus=<amazonus>0763629103</amazonus>|cover=1406305200
}}
Shark & Lobster are very scared of tigers. They are full of stripes and full of teeth, they glow in the dark, walk on their teeth and THEY EAT YOU UP!
Shark and Lobster are clearly differentiated characters, with Shark being the more timid and fearful one and the Lobster one to love the excitement and adventure. They remain friends, though, and together they are not afraid of anything.
The drawings are Schwartz's, coloured by Joel Stewart (who illustrated [[''Jabberwocky]] '' among other things), and they are truly remarkable: imagine a cross between Maurice Sendak and Lewis Carroll, with a sprinkling of Max Ernst, add a lot of greeny blues and yellowy greens and you will get a vague idea. The Sea Monster is a particularly wonderful creation, both awesomely impressive and totally ridiculous, but the whole underwater world is evoked in a few strokes of caricature-like drawings, a few washed out splashes of colour, a mature and artistically coherent image which appeals to children's sense of humour, mystery and adventure (is there a merman on the way to the Deep Sea?) and doesn't patronise them at all. Oh, and the tyger, sorry, tiger is a thing from a different world altogether, a Victorian naturalist drawing, with each hair rendered perfectly: you could indeed, imagine it glowing in the dark.
The whole book has been designed and produced with care and consistency, and its surreal imagery, absurd humour and the fact that a lot of text is in speech bubbles makes it suitable for older as well as the very young children. Highly recommended from about 3 years old onwards. In fact, it's one of the picture books that you can imagine being received as tongue-in-cheek presents by adults too.