Title: Teacup
Author: Rebecca Young
Illustrator: Matt Ottley
Publisher & year: Dial Books for Young Readers, 2015
Number of pages: 30
Tags: Adventure, Animals, Fiction, Picture Book, Grace Sheley
Genre: Fiction
The book begins with a young boy getting in a boat as the narrator reports that he has to leave his home. With him, he carries a teacup filled with dirt from his home. He travels across the sea for an indeterminate amount of time and is constantly reminded of his home. He travels through storms and calm sea, looking for a speck of land to settle on. Finally, the boy finds land and the passage of time is hinted at by the growth of a sapling to a full sized tree from the teacup he began his journey with. He builds upon the new land and is surprised one day by the appearance of a young girl who also arrives with a full sized tree growing from a cup. The final page has no text, but shows three sets of footprints in the sand, insinuating that the travelers started a family and new life on the land they found.
The text of the book is simplistic but full of vivid imagery. One page uses the phrase, “gently rocking him to sleep” to describe the movement of the ocean, another describes the color of the ocean as, “an endless sea of white,” while another page uses the emotional sentence, “Other days were so dark that the boy longed for the stars.” The text does an excellent job narrating a story, but using poetic language to draw the reader in, to step into the protagonist’s shoes. The growth of the tree in the teacup in the middle of the book seems to represent the boy’s growing hope after a long time at sea with no sight of land. He is inspired by the tree’s ability to grow and thrive, even without having a permanent home yet.
The illustrations of the book use a cool color palette; mostly blues, dark and light, with some white or softer pink tones. The placement of the boy on the left side of the page when he finally reaches land solidifies that he has reached a place to rest and grow – this is further affirmed by the sudden burst of warm colors, the tree sprawling its roots into the grass, and a goat watching over the horizon. There are no harsh lines used in the illustrations, but instead, the brushstrokes of the artist are clearly seen, creating a feeling of movement and creativity. One page uses multiple boxes of images to show the passage of time and the growth of the tree while in the teacup.
There is no author’s note after the text, but there is a short message in the opening flap of the dust cover that explains the message of the book: “readers young and old…can weather the journeys of life.” Although not explicitly stated, the book relates strongly to the struggle of refugees fleeing their homeland and desperately searching for a new place to call home. This is implied by the opening line of the text, which says, “Once there was a boy who had to leave his home…and find another.” This text is more ambiguous toward this social justice issue but may serve well to incite conversation about refugees, war, and hardship.
