A little mouse sets sail on a big adventure in 'The Ship in the Window'

Elementary school librarian Travis Jonker has been known to stand outside his Michigan neighbors’ houses holding copies of his book.

Ok, really only one neighbor.

“There’s this house that has this beautiful model ship in the window,” Jonker explains. He walks by it all the time, and one day it made him think. “What if there was a main character who wanted to actually see if it would sail like a real ship?”

The Ship in the Window is the story of Mabel, the mouse, who lives in a little cabin on a lake. She lives with a boy and his father, whose prized possession is a model ship. Mabel dreams of taking the ship out on the lake, but the father doesn’t let anyone get near it. Until one night, Mabel finally gets her chance at adventure.

“I’ve visited a few different times now and no one's ever home,” says Travis Jonker about his neighbors' house. “I have my copy already inscribed. ‘Thanks for the inspiration.’' I can't wait to give them a copy of the book.”

The Ship in the Window is illustrated by Caldecott Medalist Matthew Cordell. He drew first in black ink, creating a lot of the tone and the shading with his pen. Once the ink was dry, he painted on top of it with watercolors.

“After reading Travis’ story, it felt like it could really benefit from this sort of heavily cross-hatched, old world drawing approach,” Cordell says. And it’s hard to overstate how much cross-hatching he did — he posted a joking video of himself passing out from cross-hatching exhaustion.

“For the most part it’s kind of a nice, relaxing way to make a picture,” Cordell says. “But it got a little tedious. And my brain would get a little screwy at times.”

While Mabel does go on an adventure, it doesn’t quite turn out how she’d planned.

Author Travis Jonker says he’s been thinking a lot about the idea of why we have things — like a model ship, for instance — that we're saving for a special occasion, or just for display only. “The person that changes the most in the story is the man,” says Jonker. Through the course of events — no spoilers here — he goes from not letting anyone touch his model ship to inviting his son and Mabel to help him with it.

“I just liked the idea of, Hey, maybe if you actually just kind of like loosen up a little bit, it can open the door for this connection that wasn’t there before,” says Jonker.

“That’s one of the things I really liked about the story,” agrees illustrator Matthew Cordell. “By the end of it, they see the value of togetherness."

Speaking of connection and togetherness — if you are Travis Jonker’s neighbor in Michigan and you have a model ship in your window — answer your door! He just wants to give you a free (signed!) book.