Announcing the Final Ten Boats!

This elephant is very pleased to announce that beginning May 29th we will be counting down our LAST 10 BOATS en route to our final destination, the release date of Jonathan and the Big Blue Boat (June 7th). The top ten will include greatest hits from some of my absolute favorite stamp sets. So come on back on the 29th. You won't be disappointed!

Boat #93, Laos

Boat #100! Laos

Nifty stamp, eh? Even better is the package it came in:

I got this packet of stamps from my good friend Ollie. Ollie and I suffered through art school together. Now Ollie works as a design editor for National Geographic. You can read a little bit about the work he does for the magazine here. So Ollie gave me these stamps for Christmas. Christmas, for Ollie, apparently means February 10th. The best part is that he left the price tag on too. Now I know exactly how much my friendship is worth to him:

But seriously, as you can see it's incredibly affordable to become a stamp collector. So why not shell out a couple bucks and start traveling the world?

This is Not a Boat #9, A Celebration Day for Amos McGee

I'm very pleased to announce that A Sick Day for Amos McGee, illustrated by my wife, Erin, has been named a New York Times Best Illustrated Book of 2010. Ten books are selected annually. You can view this year's entire list here. To celebrate I thought we'd take a break from our regular scheduled boat countdown and spend some time getting to know the animal characters from Amos McGee—an elephant, a tortoise, a penguin, a rhinoceros, and an owl. I'll have to dig deep into my stamp collection to find some of these animals. After all, not many countries have penguins! I'm sure I'll find some though.

This Thai elephant is great, don't you think?

And this set from Laos is one of my all time favorite. Fantastic!

And here of course is Erin's elephant from Amos.

One last elephant before I go. This elephant is from Jonathan and the Big Blue Boat. For those of you new to 365 Boats, Jonathan will be published this coming June. A certain amount of plagiarism happens in the studio between Erin and I. My elephant here definitely bears a resemblance to Erin's.

Thanks for stopping by 365 Boats. Come back Monday. We'll be celebrating tortoises!

P.S. - Notice the stamp in the elephant's back? It's the Thai elephant (in a different denomination) from the beginning of this post.

Boat #289, Laos