The Wreck of the Zephyr

Last updated
The Wreck of the Zephyr
The Wreck of the Zephyr.jpg
Author Chris Van Allsburg
Illustrator Chris Van Allsburg
Cover artist Chris Van Allsburg
LanguageEnglish
Genre Children's, fantasy novel
Publisher Houghton Mifflin
Publication date
1983 [1]
Publication placeUnited States
Media typePrint (hardcover)
Pages31 [2]
ISBN 978-1849395434
Preceded by Ben's Dream  
Followed by The Mysteries of Harris Burdick  

The Wreck of the Zephyr is a children's book written and illustrated by the American author Chris Van Allsburg, first published by Houghton Mifflin in March 1983. [1]

Contents

Plot

While exploring the seaside clifftop near a small fishing village, the narrator comes upon the wreck of a small wooden sailboat. A weathered old man is sitting near the wreck, and the narrator asks him how the boat came to be there, so far from the water. The old man begins to tell the story of a young boy who, years ago, was the most talented sailor in the harbor, never missing an opportunity to prove it, performing feats that none of the grown men would dare try.

One day the boy decided to go out despite the storm brewing just outside the harbor and against the warnings of an old fisherman. As he sails out of the harbor, a big gust strikes the boat and the strong waves knock him unconscious. When the boy recovers, he finds himself and the boat (the Zephyr) stranded on a strange beach far above shore. He searches for help and after a long time crests a hill to see the Zephyr being towed by two boats floating through the air. From the hilltop the boy watches the two strange boats deposit the Zephyr in the harbor.

Back in the harbor, he encounters a fisherman who, surprised at the boy's return, tells him that they do not get any visitors because the island is surrounded by a treacherous reef. He offers to take the boy home but the boy refuses, saying he will not leave before learning how to sail above the waves. The fisherman gives the boy a special set of sails for the Zephyr and spends all day trying to teach him, but the boy repeatedly fails to accomplish the task. The fisherman gives up and takes the boy home, where his wife has prepared dinner.

Once the fisherman and his wife are asleep, the boy sneaks out to the Zephyr for another try. This time he succeeds. By the light of the full moon the boy navigates out of the harbor and sets a course for home.

As he nears his village, he aims to ring the high church bell, letting everyone know that he truly is the greatest sailor ever. But just as he passes over the steeple, the wind dies, sending the Zephyr plummeting. The boy heads back for the safety of the harbor, but cannot make it and crashes into the cliff, destroying the Zephyr. He badly breaks his leg.

Afterward, the old man claims, the townspeople never believed him, and the boy spent his life doing odd jobs and searching for the mysterious island. The old man ends by commenting that the breeze looks just right for a sail as he limps back down toward the harbor, suggesting the old man is the boy from the story.

Fritz

As in all Van Allsburg's stories, [3] Fritz the Dog is hidden in this book. He can be found on page nine, standing near the fisherman as he warns the boy against taking the boat out into the rough storm. [4]

Film adaptation

As of 2020, Paramount had purchased the film rights but due to the COVID-19 pandemic the production has been delayed.[ citation needed ]

Related Research Articles

<i>Cabin Boy</i> 1994 American fantasy comedy film

Cabin Boy is a 1994 American fantasy comedy film directed by Adam Resnick, co-produced by Tim Burton, and starring comedian Chris Elliott. Elliott co-wrote the film with Resnick. Both Elliott and Resnick worked for Late Night with David Letterman in the 1980s as well as co-creating the Fox sitcom Get a Life in the early 1990s.

<i>Winner Take Nothing</i> Book by Ernest Hemingway

Winner Take Nothing is a 1933 collection of short stories by Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway's third and final collection of stories, it was published four years after A Farewell to Arms (1929), and a year after his non-fiction book about bullfighting, Death in the Afternoon (1932).

"Jeffty Is Five" is a fantasy short story by American author Harlan Ellison. It was first published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in 1977, then was included in DAW's The 1978 Annual World's Best SF in 1978 and Ellison's short story collection Shatterday two years later. According to Ellison, it was partially inspired by a fragment of conversation that he misheard at a party at the home of actor Walter Koenig: "How is Jeff?" "Jeff is fine. He's always fine," which he perceived as "Jeff is five, he's always five." Ellison based the character of Jeffty on Joshua Andrew Koenig, Walter's son. He declared:

... I had been awed and delighted by Josh Koenig, and I instantly thought of just such a child who was arrested in time at the age of five. Jeffty, in no small measure, is Josh: the sweetness of Josh, the intelligence of Josh, the questioning nature of Josh.

<i>The Mysteries of Harris Burdick</i> 1984 picture book by Van Allsburg

The Mysteries of Harris Burdick is a 1984 picture book by the American author Chris Van Allsburg. It consists of a series of images, ostensibly created by Harris Burdick, a man who has mysteriously disappeared. Each image is accompanied by a title and a single line of text, which encourage readers to create their own stories. Many famous writers have tried to put their own twists on the pictures.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Castaway</span> Person who is cast adrift or ashore, usually in a shipwreck

A castaway is a person who is cast adrift or ashore. While the situation usually happens after a shipwreck, some people voluntarily stay behind on a desert island, either to evade captors or the world in general. A person may also be left ashore as punishment (marooned).

<i>Zathura: A Space Adventure</i> 2005 film by Jon Favreau

Zathura: A Space Adventure is a 2005 American science fiction action-adventure film directed by Jon Favreau. It is an adaptation of the 2002 children's book Zathura by Chris Van Allsburg, author of the 1981 children's book Jumanji. It is a standalone spin-off of the 1995 film Jumanji and the second installment of the Jumanji franchise. The film stars Josh Hutcherson, Jonah Bobo, Dax Shepard, Kristen Stewart, and Tim Robbins.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Steerforth</span> Fictional character

James Steerforth is a character in the 1850 novel David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. He is a handsome young man noted for his wit and romantic charm. Though he is well liked by his friends, he proves himself to be condescending and lacking in consideration for others.

<i>The Country of the Pointed Firs</i> Short story sequence

The Country of the Pointed Firs is an 1896 book by American writer Sarah Orne Jewett. It is considered by some literary critics to be her finest work.

<i>Black and White</i> (picture book) 1990 picture book by David Macaulay

Black and White is a 1990 postmodern children's picture book by David Macaulay. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company, it received mixed reviews upon its release, but it was the recipient of the Caldecott Medal for illustration in 1991. The book tells four overlapping stories, each drawn with a distinct visual style. The four stories are "Seeing Things", about a boy on a train trip by himself, "Problem Parents", about siblings whose parents behave differently one night, "A Waiting Game", about people waiting for a train, and "Udder Chaos", about cows who escape and then return to their field.

<i>Strange Cargo</i> (1940 film) 1940 film by Frank Borzage

Strange Cargo is a 1940 American romantic drama film directed by Frank Borzage and starring Clark Gable and Joan Crawford in a story about a group of fugitive prisoners from a French penal colony. The adapted screenplay by Lawrence Hazard was based upon the 1936 novel, Not Too Narrow, Not Too Deep, by Richard Sale. The film was produced by Joseph L. Mankiewicz for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer; it was the eighth and last film pairing of Crawford and Gable, and the first Gable picture released in the wake of Gone with the Wind. The supporting cast includes Ian Hunter, Paul Lukas, Eduardo Ciannelli, and Peter Lorre.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Battle of Gloucester (1775)</span> Skirmish in the American Revolutionary War at Gloucester, Massachusetts

The Battle of Gloucester was a skirmish fought early in the American Revolutionary War at Gloucester, Massachusetts on August 8 or 9, 1775. Royal Navy Captain John Linzee, commanding the sloop-of-war HMS Falcon, spotted two schooners that were returning from the West Indies. After capturing one schooner, Linzee chased the second one into Gloucester Harbor, where it was grounded. The townspeople called out their militia, captured British seamen sent to seize the grounded schooner, and recovered the captured ship as well.

Anekdote zur Senkung der Arbeitsmoral is a short story by Heinrich Böll about an encounter between an enterprising tourist and a small fisherman, in which the tourist suggests how the fisherman can improve his life. It was written for a Labour Day programme on the Norddeutscher Rundfunk in 1963, and is considered one of the best stories written by Heinrich Böll.

SS <i>Myron</i> Wooden steamship that sank in Lake Superior

SS Myron was a wooden steamship built in 1888. She spent her 31-year career as lumber hooker, towing schooner barges on the Great Lakes. She sank in 1919, in a Lake Superior November gale. All of her 17 crew members were killed but her captain survived. He was found drifting on wreckage near Ile Parisienne. Her tow, the Miztec, survived. Myron defied the adage that Lake Superior "seldom gives up her dead" when all 17 crewmembers were found frozen to death wearing their life jackets. Local residents chopped eight of Myron's sailors from the ice on the shore of Whitefish Bay and buried them at the Mission Hill Cemetery in Bay Mills Township, Michigan.

The Invercauld was an 1,100-ton sailing vessel that was wrecked on the Auckland Islands in 1864.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Capture of John "Calico Jack" Rackham</span> 1720 naval engagement off Negril

The capture of John "Calico Jack" Rackham was a single-ship action fought between English pirate Calico Jack and British privateer Jonathan Barnet. The battle was fought in the vicinity of Negril, Jamaica and ended with the capture of Rackham and his crew.

<i>A Strange Discovery</i> 1899 novel by Charles Romeyn Dake

A Strange Discovery is an 1899 novel by Charles Romeyn Dake and is a sequel to Edgar Allan Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket which was published in 1838. It follows the experiences of the narrator, an Englishman, during his stay in Bellevue, Illinois, and his encounter with Dirk Peters, Pym's sailor companion in Poe's novel. On his deathbed, Peters relates the missing conclusion to Poe's tale.

"The Celestial Railroad", 1843, is a short story by American author Nathaniel Hawthorne. In the allegorical tale, Hawthorne adopts the style and content of the seventeenth-century allegory The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan. Where Bunyan's tale portrays a Christian's spiritual "journey" through life, Hawthorne's satirizes many contemporary religious practices and philosophies, including transcendentalism.

Josiah Burgess was an English pirate active in the Caribbean. He is best known as one of the heads of New Providence’s “Flying Gang.”

<i>After the Storm</i> (2001 film) 2001 film by Guy Ferland

After the Storm is a 2001 American adventure film starring Benjamin Bratt, Mili Avital, Armand Assante, and Simone-Élise Girard. The story centers around the efforts of a group of people to salvage valuables from a sunken yacht in the Bahamas in 1933 and their schemes to betray and double-cross one another.

The Interclub Dinghy is an American sailing dinghy that was designed by Sparkman & Stephens as a one-design racer and first built in 1946. It is sailed in frostbite racing on the US east coast, particularly on Long Island Sound. Frostbite races are the series held after the normal sailing season is finished.

References

  1. 1 2 "The Wreck of the Zephyr 30th Anniversary Edition". Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Books (hmhbooks.com). Retrieved December 1, 2020.
  2. The Wreck of the Zephyr. Houghton Mifflin. 1983. ISBN   0395330750.
  3. "Hiding Fritz". Reading Rockets. April 16, 2014. Archived from the original on 2021-12-13. Retrieved December 1, 2020.
  4. "A Teacher's Guide: The Wreck of the Zephyr". Houghton Mifflin Company. 2004. Retrieved December 1, 2020.