Mokie and Bik are fraternal twins who live on a boat with their mom, their nanny, and some pets, which is just as exciting as it sounds. The art, by Jonathan Bean, is great: the cover, with Mokie swinging from a rope, pigtails flying, sets the tone of mischievousness and charm, and the endpapers—one of which is pictured above—are wonderful: they’re cutaway drawings of the boat, Bullfrog, and its spaces and inhabitants, with the front endpapers set during the day and the back ones set at night. In both the images and the text, Mokie and Bik are often in motion: as the first chapter puts it, they’re always “overboard or underfoot,” and “twin overboard!” is a phrase that shows up early and keeps getting repeated (7). The twins have their own language, and the text is playful, with lots of action words, in sentences like: “Mokie slip slid slippered back down the deck, skate chase racing past the wheelhouse, slip slide slippering down to Bullfrog’s stern, to balance on her sliptoes at the very back rail” (4). The family’s aging canine, Laddie, is a “sleepdog” and another pet, Slow, is a “tortle”; ice cream from the captain of the police boat is “police cream.” The twins’ dad, meanwhile, isn’t around much: he “had a ship-at-sea with clouds of sails on five tall masts and a brrr-ooping broop for fog, and he salty sailed around the world” (8). The twins get into trouble and out of it, and amuse themselves on the boat and the quayside, and the story is sweet enough, with the end being especially charming. But as an adult reader, the art is clearly the draw of these books. In addition to the aforementioned cover and endpapers, I also loved this picture of Mokie and Bik in their bunks with their portholes, this picture of the twins with Laddie, and the below, a great spread showing the working waterfront (complete with a tugboat!) where Mokie and Bik live.
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