01/07/2024
Nutshell Regatta by Jonna Laster won First Place in the 2023 CIBA Little Peeps Awards for Early Readers and Children's Books.
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In Nutshell Regatta, the narrator's grandmother reveals adventures in nature that could easily be missed without her watchful eye.
With her wise guidance, clouds turn into campers, dandelions hold moon yokes, leaves sing, and a broken branch takes on the form of a fox. Most importantly, twigs and pebbles become sailors who embark on a grand regatta in their nutshell sloops and sailboats.
Three ships come to the forefront of the story. Two of them sink, their twig sailors swimming safely to a nearby lily pad, while one continues on. Its passengers Burt the pebble and Betula the birch twig encounter what appears to be disaster, but when they fall over a waterfall, the grandmother guides the narrator to listen closely. When they hear a faint “yipeeeeee” from the bottom of the waterfall, it’s clear that all has turned out well.
The narrator takes more ownership over the fantasy in the end, wondering aloud to their grandmother about where Burt and Betula might end up—downstream or even all the way to sea. The grandmother doesn’t miss a beat, suggesting the twig and pebble passengers might send a postcard. And indeed, the final illustration of the book is just that—a postcard from Burt and Betula!
From beginning to end, Nutshell Regatta is an imaginative poem. Laster takes mundane aspects of nature—like twigs, pebbles, and common flowers—and turns them into lyrical images and dramatic adventures sure to captivate any child or child-like heart. The tension of Burt and Betula falling over the waterfall is just the right touch of stress, with a valuable resolution.
Laster could have resolved the story with the grandmother or narrator scooping the nutshells out of the water to save them. Instead, she takes a different and more developmentally helpful direction: the little sloops fall down the waterfall, and the grandmother coaches the child on creating a happy outcome for the event (the passengers going on a new adventure). This resolution could help guide anxious children to find positive meanings in change and transition.
The illustrations are wholesome and sweet, with little twig people peeking out of each picture even before they are introduced into the story. The images serve the story immensely by bringing to life the cheerful adventurers in all shapes and sizes.
Regardless of what children take away on a conscious level, they will be delighted by the fantastical lens through which we see Burt and Betula’s adventures.
But for discerning young readers, Laster’s direct message is that “there are passengers everywhere,” if only you might look for them.
Children will surely come away from Nutshell Regatta inspired to make twig people and shell boats of their own the next time they find themselves in nature.
