Inspired by a trip to the British seaside town of Whitstable in Kent, Benji Davies’s acclaimed 2013 release The Storm Whale made his name worldwide as an author-illustrator and, a decade on, Davies still receives fan mail from faraway shores.
The story of a young boy who befriends a whale after finding it washed up on the sand, its success prompted two more books from the “world of The Storm Whale”, and now a fourth in the series. Their charm lies partly in the timeless quality of the simple yet love-filled coastal world they depict. Each opens with the familiar line, “Noi lived with his dad and six cats by the sea” and the irresistible (though never explicitly posed) challenge to spot every one of those cats preening and prowling around the wooden hut that Noi and his fisher father call home.
