Overview
It is 1730 when Raphael Pommeroy arrives in the West Indies with his ornithology professor. They’re supposed to be in search of the almost-extinct dodo . . . but Raphael is quickly entranced with the piratical inhabitants of the island, becoming obsessed with their vision of a world where all people are free and equal, regardless of their skin color. Drama unfolds on Bourbon Island as all the inhabitants race to find the treasure secretly cached on their island – and reveal their inner selves in doing so.
An epic adventure in the tradition of Watership Down, Bourbon Island 1730 is a unique historical drama featuring animal characters, fully imagined and realized by Lewis Trondheim and Appollo in pitch-perfect words and inventive pictures.
Synopsis
It is 1730 when Raphael Pommeroy arrives in the West Indies with his ornithology professor. They’re supposed to be in search of the almost-extinct dodo . . . but Raphael is quickly entranced with the piratical inhabitants of the island, becoming obsessed with their vision of a world where all people are free and equal, regardless of their skin color. Drama unfolds on Bourbon Island as all the inhabitants race to find the treasure secretly cached on their island – and reveal their inner selves in doing so.
An epic adventure in the tradition of Watership Down, Bourbon Island 1730 is a unique historical drama featuring animal characters, fully imagined and realized by Lewis Trondheim and Appollo in pitch-perfect words and inventive pictures.
Publishers Weekly
This eccentric but illuminating historical drama draws on the peculiar realities of the end of the golden age of maritime piracy (and its intersection with the slave trade), and spins them into a compelling, engrossing story of people considering whether their cause is worth more to them than their lives. On an island near Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, the pirate captain Buzzard has been captured, and the escaped slaves and pardoned pirates who populate the hills are sparring over the risks of trying to free him. Meanwhile, a handful of Europeans, including a plantation owner's daughter whose head is filled with fantasies of being kidnapped by Maroons, are drawn into the old order's collision with colonialism. Trondheim's loose, doodly visual style takes a bit of getting used to, especially his habit of drawing all his characters as anthropomorphic animals-in a book where several major characters are ornithologists, it's peculiar to see one of them as a duck-but his storytelling instincts are unerring. This is a small gem of a book, and its characters are memorable on their own, even as they symbolize the historical forces of their time. (Nov.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Editorials
Publishers Weekly
This eccentric but illuminating historical drama draws on the peculiar realities of the end of the golden age of maritime piracy (and its intersection with the slave trade), and spins them into a compelling, engrossing story of people considering whether their cause is worth more to them than their lives. On an island near Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, the pirate captain Buzzard has been captured, and the escaped slaves and pardoned pirates who populate the hills are sparring over the risks of trying to free him. Meanwhile, a handful of Europeans, including a plantation owner's daughter whose head is filled with fantasies of being kidnapped by Maroons, are drawn into the old order's collision with colonialism. Trondheim's loose, doodly visual style takes a bit of getting used to, especially his habit of drawing all his characters as anthropomorphic animals-in a book where several major characters are ornithologists, it's peculiar to see one of them as a duck-but his storytelling instincts are unerring. This is a small gem of a book, and its characters are memorable on their own, even as they symbolize the historical forces of their time. (Nov.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.School Library Journal
Gr 10 Up
This is a fine pirate story, with complexities in both plot and cultural issues. With sensitivity to both the political and natural history of Réunion Island (which was called Bourbon Island for some years both before and after the time in which this tale is set), about 600 miles east of Madagascar, it's a more intellectual than physical adventure. Raphael, apprenticed to a scientist in search of the last dodo, romanticizes the pirate life until he witnesses firsthand the hardships suffered by reformed pirates, Creoles, and other island dwellers subject to corrupt colonial government and repressive social mores. While the story line is itself artful and satisfying, its rendering here, with every character depicted in Trondheim's hallmark manner as a trait-revealing animal or bird, provides added depth and dimension. American readers will note the full lips of those bears, cats, dogs, and other creatures depicting persons of African descent as perhaps controversial. This is a controversy not to be avoided but to initiate a discussion of how contemporary French writers and artists portray history, a history told in black-and-white comics with no shading of images, although abundant shading of the basic standard pirate plot of good versus evil. Endnotes indicate the reliance on historical documents and facts as the background for this imaginative story.-Francisca Goldsmith, Halifax Public Libraries, Nova Scotia