Amos & Boris

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On their journey, Boris and Amos talk about everything. They develop a deep admiration for one another. Boris delivers Amos to shore and they discuss how they are going to miss each other and how they wish they could be friends forever. They decide that they will be friends forever but one has to live on land and one has to live in the sea. Amos is so grateful to Boris for saving his life that he tells Boris if he ever needs help that he will be there for him. Neither one knew how Amos could ever help the big whale. This lovers parted, much later reunited storyline is straight out of a Nicholas Sparks love tragedy — the tragedy being that they can’t spend their entire lives together due to unavoidable circumstance. EXTRAPOLATED ENDING

The Enormous Turnip has a similar message, and all the similar cumulative stories such as Pamela Allen’s Who Sank The Boat? RESONANCE Amos, the mouse, meets Boris, the whale, under far less than ideal circumstances, the former having rolled off his boat in the middle of an exploratory sea voyage, and now languishing in the sea as his tiny body tires in the massive expanse of salt water. Boris surfaces beside Amos just when his strength has ebbed to near empty, and saves the mouse's life, and neither one will ever forget what comes about as a result of that happenstance. When Amos is able to unexpectedly return the favor to his friend many years later, the reunion between the old friends is truly something for the reader to cherish in his heart, and the eventual parting of the duo is bittersweetly touching to an extent that one just doesn't find in very many picture books. Then again, William Steig is the master.

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Brave Irene,” from 1986, is one of the author’s most exhilarating books. It’s also one of his most disturbing, perhaps because the characters are humans. A dressmaker falls ill as she completes a gown for a duchess; her daughter, Irene, volunteers to deliver it, as a snowstorm descends, and Irene has a dark night of the soul. “Even if she could call for help, no one would hear her. Her body shook. Her teeth chattered. Why not freeze to death, she thought, and let all these troubles end. Why not? She was already buried.”

Many years after the incidentsjust described, when Amos was no longer a very young mouse, and when Boris was no longer a very young whale,thereoccurredone of the worst storms of theThis is a wonderful story for children of all ages, all types of read-aloud situations, and also fine for independent readers to read themselves. This is one of those stories bifurcated by a massive leap in time — the first half of the story takes place when the lovers are young. They next meet when they are old. This is the ending of the Youth chapter: William Steig was enthusiastically recommended to me years ago by a relative, for my children, and we now have a number of his books. One of my favourites is Amos & Boris, where an industrious little mouse sets off on an intrepid voyage across the sea, with unexpected results.