I am going to be upfront and straightforward in stating what might not have already been inferred by the title of this particular work: I am about to review a children’s book, the kind with big pictures and short, simple sentences. This might seem an odd choice for someone like me, who would supposedly tend to prefer wordier and weightier fare, but I am absolutely in love with this book and utterly compelled to share my wonderful discovery of it with those whose eyes will happen to fall upon this page.

I owe this extremely pleasant bit of happenstance to my local Barnes & Noble, which invited (as I now know) local author/illustrator Bob Logan to read and sign The Sea of Bath. In anticipation of this event, they had a few copies propped around the store with placards announcing its details. The cover illustration of a sea captain aboard a small sail boat immediately caught my eye, and I had to pick up a copy to investigate further.

The book’s short but fanciful plot involves the captain of the S.S. Rubb A. Dubb venturing through the strange waters of a child’s bathtub. However, our hero is unaware of the true nature of his bizarre ocean, and perhaps always will be. Yet, this does not deter his journey one bit as he marvels at the weird creatures he encounters.

I tumbled madly into love with this book as I turned its thick pages. Logan’s artwork is alluring in its simple beauty and positively eye-catching from cover to stern, and the story was one pulled straight from my childhood. Having a lifelong obsession with the sea from a young age inevitably led to many bathtub adventures involving stormy waters and brave captains with strong ships and stronger wills. And here, through Logan’s work, I saw those same grand stories come back to life, rushing and bubbling up from deepest memory, a creature from the truest core of my heart, wrapping its tentacles once more around my imagination.

This is the book I want to read to my future children, to their children, and to their children. I want to buy another copy and read it to my beautiful niece and bouncy nephew, to give them even just a little bit of that sense of wonder which captivated me as a young boy.

Perhaps this seems a bit much praise for a children’s book, but Logan has struck a harmonious chord in me by putting forth into the world a simple work that speaks to that growing seed in a child’s mind that there are grand and exciting and endless adventures that await us, even if those journeys begin (for the moment, anyway) only in our bathtubs and imaginations. The Sea of Bath is the grain of sand around which the pearl of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea forms. Our paths all begin somewhere. And, thanks to Bob Logan, our children have a wonderful place to start.

It was a great disappointment that I was not able to make the reading/signing event whose promotions brought this book into my life, but Logan graciously left a few copies behind, the title pages signed and scrawled with doodles. I purchased one of these, and I shall cherish it always. I do hope that the future holds a day where I might get to meet the man behind the work, but for now I will have to settle for the beautiful footprint he has left behind. I look forward to the next footprint, and the one after that, and so on, down a path that will surely be a joy to follow.