My Little Boats

Content : In the last century, a little boy has never seen the sea. Yet beneath his window flows the River Seine...
Rivers flow into great rivers, and great rivers flow into the sea...
Our young hero turns his bed into a raft and sets sail – on and on, little boat – all the way to the sea...
Along the way, he joyfully discovers the life that thrives beside the water: all kinds of boats, swimmers, riverside cafés, harbours and fishermen.

The little boy's voyage takes us into everyday life along the water around 1900. He delights in watching horses come down to the river for their daily wash. He, too, grabs a fishing rod and even joins a regatta in the hope of winning the trophy...
Along the way, we discover the bathing costumes of the period, straw boaters, rowing boats and regattas – the everyday scenes and landscapes that so inspired the Impressionist painters.

On every double-page spread, a masterpiece is introduced and then imaginatively extended in Éric Battut's illustrations.
The book features twelve paintings of the banks of the Seine and the beaches of Normandy by the great masters of Impressionism and their precursors: Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Caillebotte, Seurat, Boudin.