How Jack Lost Time

by Stéphanie Lapointe, Delphie Côté-Lacroix (Illustrator), Arielle Aaronson (Translator)

Overview

An artful and timeless exploration of love, loss, grief, and family, How Jack Lost Time will appeal to readers of Charlie Mackesy’s The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse, and other picture books for older readers and adults.

Jack is not like other sea captains. Fishermen say he’s weird, but Jack only cares about one thing: the grey whale with the scarred dorsal fin, the one who swallowed up his son, Julos, years before. Jack promises he will not come home without Julos, even if it means losing himself in the process. Then, on a night like any other, Jack sees something lurking around his boat. He throws himself into the whale’s dark mouth. But is he too late? Will his son recognize him after years of being alone?

Poignant, original, and vibrant, this contemporary nautical fable journeys into the heart of the human spirit, and will move readers young and old.

Winner of the 2019 Governor General’s Award for Youth Literature—French Language

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781771647571
Publisher:	Greystone Books
Publication date:	10/13/2020
Pages:	96
Product dimensions:	7.50(w) x 10.00(h) x (d)
Lexile:	730L (what's this?)
Age Range:	9 - 12 Years

About the Author

STÉPHANIE LAPOINTE is a singer, actress, documentary director, and author from Montreal. She won the Grand Prix Lux Infopresse and Governor General’s Award for Young People’s Literature—Illustrated Books in 2016 with Grand-père et la Lune (Grandfather and the Moon), illustrated by Rogé.

DELPHIE CÔTÉ-LACROIX is a multidisciplinary visual artist with a background in graphic design. She uses simple composition and a limited color palette to create images that are delicate yet impactful.

Editorial Reviews

"[How Jack Lost Time] offers an affecting, devastating portrayal of the reverberating impacts of loss."
— Booklist

“The nautical narrative promises to be quirky, mature, and quite sad."
— Quill & Quire

From the Publisher

2020-07-14
From Canada, a picture book, originally published in French, for older readers that tells a story of decisions made and the consequences thereof.

Jack, a grizzled sea captain, lives on his boat, even planting a garden on it, because he is obsessed with finding his son, Julos. On a father-son outing years ago, Julos disappeared, and Jack last saw him in the jaws of a distinctively scarred gray whale. Torn by grief and rage, Jack made the decision not to go home to his waiting wife until he could track down the whale. Despite, or perhaps because of, these allusions to Moby-Dick and the biblical Jonah story, this tale fails to reach their depths. Years have passed, and Jack has searched, turning into a “mean, dark” man. When he finally does find the whale, he comes face to face with his reckoning. It’s a grim, unrequited story of loss, and it seems more geared to adult sensibilities than young readers’. Poetically inclined middle graders and young teens may revel in the lyrical, often beautiful narrative, although it occasionally comes off as labored. Coté-Lacroix’s spare illustrations are in a subdued palette, mostly shades of gray and brown. Some aspects are simply sketched in rather than filled in with color, and this gives the illustrations an alluring insubstantiality that matches the shifting, ephemeral quality of the story. All characters present White.

A grim tale of loss that may itself be lost on young readers. (Picture book. 10-14)

Kirkus Reviews