Here and There

In this picture book debut, Lu observes two adults living very different lives. Dan, a pale-skinned, mustache-sporting man shown sitting at a long wooden table, owns a café in a small seaside town. His life is “like a big oak tree, rooted in his town and never moving.” Aki, who wears a neatly trimmed black beard, is a sailor. He stands at the prow of a boat, gazing out, and lives “like a nomadic gull, always on the wing and never settling down.” Drawing Dan’s world in earth tones and Aki’s in oceanic blues, close-textured illustrations delineate the parts of human experience that each one is missing out on. Customers from the “far east” and the “far north” tell Dan about distant places he’s never been, while Aki occasionally glimpses, as a guest, feelings of camaraderie and family: “Children gathered to hear his stories about the sea.” Quiet colors and loose, expressive figures produce artwork that’s rich in feeling, with many tiny details—a woodstove drying wet socks, the keepsakes each man treasures—captured at close range. At the story’s end, Dan and Aki meet at a warm gathering, and their worlds become one, for a spread at least, in this deeply felt story about reality and longing. Ages 5–9. (Apr.)