We also read the original that doesn't show you what the sea-thing child looks like. I preferred that edition, likely because I read it first. ( )

No ISBN but there is an SBN on dust jacket (06-022399-5)

My daughter's rendition. This early version doesn't have an illustration of the sea-thing child so I asked her to draw what she thought it looked like.
( )

Kind of bleakly magical--the sea-thing child's bedraggled self hiding in an igloo of stones and then wandering out, the odd creatures encountered, the world of sea and sand made me think of our distant ancestors crawling out of the primordial and looking around on an endless beach for the first time (I assume that's how it worked), and burying the traumatic memories of what happened underwater. The characters were peculiar in a kind of a ,i>Labyrinthy or ly way. I liked it although I'm not sure my son's literary palate is evolved enough to get it yet. ( )

Glorious allegory for childhood, friendship and self-discovery. The author's son illustrated the luxurious words with peb-and-ink drawings that never show the sea-thing child and leave it to our imagination. ( )