The Wanderer (2019)

The Wanderer by Peter Van Den Ende (2019) is a large, wordless, picture book of intricate black and white drawings of fantasy sea creatures. I didn’t understand the story, so I can’t do a good job of describing it. On the first page, it looks to me like two people fold a huge piece of fabric into a simple boat. One of the people is wearing a costume with cape, head covering, and horns. Next, the tiny boat floats away from a giant ship by the name of Exporatio. The boat floats through page after page of ocean landscapes, often under water. It contacts a variety of sea creatures that seem to be a fanciful conglomerations of body parts from human, animal, bird, and sea life. At the end of the little boat’s wandering journey, it arrives at a place where the Exploratio seems to be  docked. There’s no evidence of any inhabitants in the boat until the end when a person resembling one on the first page materializes. The final page and inside cover is a map of the boat’s journey.