Is that Peter (of Ezra Jack Keats fame) on the cover of Daniel Miyares's Float? Might be. There is something inviting about the cover of this gentle wordless book, isn’t there? Slip off the jacket and be wowed by the case cover — a newspaper boat floating off to the right and into the sun.

The use of color, especially the color yellow, moves the story forward. The yellow raincoat, hat, and boots hold the little boy together and allow him to pop off the page. The pink and blue of the folded paper boat allows the boy to recognize his toy, even after it goes down the sewer grate. This quiet, moving story of a toy created, lost, and eventually remade is a nod to both a simpler time and a brighter future. The bright yellow sun on the final pages and the folded boat and paper airplane endpapers add to the charm. Sun and shadow. Rain and clearing. Everything plays together nicely here.

Whenever I'm on a book award committee, I try to get help in looking at art or design that I either love or am confused by. When I was on the Real Committee, I was especially suspicious of my Deep Love for a book. I would often have a strong response and then realize I was unable to articulate why I loved a particular book or style. In a way, this happened here. I loved sharing this book with my second graders but could not quite put my finger on why. I am always drawn to small moments, and this is a small moment. I liked the gray and yellow. But, that’s not enough.

I was not confused by this art, but I was challenged by the use of panels to show the passage of time in Float. There were a couple of other parts that I had questions about as well, mainly the way the little boy’s face changes throughout the book. So I called on an illustrator friend and went through the book with him.

There’s nothing like an actual artist to help teach me a thing or two. First, while I found the use of color— especially the grays — comforting, he found it cold. Okay. There can be different aesthetic senses. Then he turned to the spread that consists of two horizontal panels spanning the gutter, with, at top left, the boy looking back and forth for his lost boat. My illustrator friend remarked that Miyares used the exact same image twice, for both panels. At first I disagreed. I just didn’t see what he was seeing. Gently, he pointed out that the top image is the same as the bottom, except with the yellow boy and zooming boat painted on. I’m not sure what that means exactly, but I did see that the image on the top and the image on the bottom of the spread were the same, once it was pointed out. Between the top panel and the bottom panel, time has passed, because the boy has moved, and the panel is the time line, so my artist friend asserts that the images should change from top to bottom. The trees should move? The grasses should shift? Something to think about.

The face of the boy is just a little off somehow to me. As I looked at him over and over, the color tone seems to change from pale to orange to nearly light yellow. When he is getting his hair dried, the boy looks older than a little boy who would be wearing a throwback yellow raincoat. The line of his mouth lacks the rosebud of the earlier pages. It's no big deal, just something I noticed. As I close the book, I remember how much I love those endpapers, showing how to fold newspaper into boats and aiplanes. I wonder if that really works with such big pieces of paper?

This is all to say that people on the Real Committee should be soliciting the opinion of informed others. I brought Dave the Potter to show a collage artist and a potter. I ran Interrupting Chicken by two art teachers to see if I was imagining Van Gogh into some of the scenes. I consulted online interviews with the Steads to figure out just what Erin’s technique was in A Sick Day with Amos McGee. The committee should be open, open, open to others' opinions of the book. And then, they deliberate for themselves.

Often on the committee, the chair will bring in an expert to talk to the group. On my year, Judy Zuckerman asked K.T. Horning to talk to us. One of the things K.T. said has always stayed with me: Every single thing on the page is there for a reason. Your job is to figure out why it is there and to see if you agree. Float is going to be in the mix this year. It has that timeless feel and feels new — all at the same time. The committee will have a lot to talk about with it. They will see familiar references to Ezra Jack Keats and will love following the panels and chasing the boat along its journey. There will be people who love it and people who are puzzled.

As I always say, it’s a committee, and a committee has to duke it out and vote. I wonder what they will do?