THE GREAT SHIPS

Children with even a hint of the sea in their blood will pore wide-eyed over this album of dramatic ship paintings. O’Brien (Megatooth, p. 804, etc.) selects more than 20 vessels, ranging from the thousand-year-old Gokstad Ship to the nuclear carrier Enterprise, pairing several paragraphs of historical background for each to large, precisely detailed portraits. Drake’s Golden Hind sails away from a burning Spanish victim; Admiral Cheng Ho’s mammoth “Treasure Ship” glides by grandly; the Constitution dukes it out with the Guerriere, the Monitor with the Virginia, the Bismarck with the Hood. The clipper ship Flying Cloud seems to fly over the waves, while the Amistad and the Mayflower struggle, the Titanic sinks, and the Maine, well, blows up. O’Brien adds occasional human figures to show young viewers just how astonishingly small some of these renowned craft were, then finishes up with a note about each ship’s current whereabouts. Armchair sailors will line up to come aboard. (Nonfiction. 8-11)