I Ship: A Container Ship's Colossal Journey

by Kelly Rice Schmitt, Jam Dong (Illustrator)

Overview

Made of steel, / colossal, / strong, / I ship around the world.

Come aboard a massive container ship as it pulls into port, loads up with cargo, and heads out to the open ocean. The ship’s voyage includes starry skies and stormy seas, swift currents and unforeseen delays. Through it all, the crew keeps working—with goods to keep the world going, they must carry on.

Rhythmic text from Kelly Rice Schmitt and delightfully detailed illustrations from Jam Dong provide a riveting look at the journey of one mighty ship.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781728476827
Publisher:	Lerner Publishing Group
Publication date:	10/03/2023
Series:	On the Move
Pages:	40
Product dimensions:	10.50(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.50(d)
Age Range:	7 - 8 Years

About the Author

Kelly Rice Schmitt is an author of STEAM children's literature. She holds a B.B.A in Finance and Chinese from the University of Notre Dame and is an advocate for girls in STEM, business, and other fields with gender gaps. She can be found in North Carolina helping other traders grow their businesses, writing for children, and exploring, singing, and creating with her husband and young children.

Jam Dong was born in Shanghai, China. She has an MA degree of moving image at University of Arts London and graduated from MFA Illustration Practice of Maryland Institute College of Art in 2021. She likes to use bright colors and simple shapes to build the imaginary world inside her mind. The beauty of nature provides her with inspiration all the time. She is a freelance illustrator based in Boston, Massachusetts.

Editorial Reviews

"This is bliss for any child who loves boats, for units on global transportation, or for anyone who has ever asked how this all works."—School Library Journal

From the Publisher

2023-07-13
A colossal narrator takes younger readers on a long, essential voyage.

Estimating that 80% to 90% of the world’s global trade moves by ship, Schmitt assumes the voice of a (generic) gargantuan vessel piled high with “intermodal containers” to retrace a long journey—delayed by a major storm and extended by a detour around Africa when another ship blocks the Suez Canal—from (according to the dotted line on a schematic map) one unspecified port in east Asia to another in northern Europe. A scene of the ship circling a stopwatch evokes the sense of mission that rings throughout the author’s terse, rhythmic narrative (“I carry goods wherever I go / helping the global economy flow”), and another startling view of the vessel steaming past two diminutive whales really brings home its sheer size. Elsewhere Dong presents flattened, stylized portraits of it and other working ships of diverse size and design, also offering frequent cutaway glimpses of what they carry, from pineapples and pumpkins to cars, clothes, and cows. Along with an expanded discussion of the challenges of the shipping trade, the backmatter includes a select list of related careers and leads to online resources. Rare human figures in the pictures are mostly brown-skinned. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

An informative peek at our global infrastructure’s major lifeline. (Informational picture book. 5-8)

Kirkus Reviews