The story, told in bouncy quatrains (you can almost hear the hornpipe), is full of nautical imagery…. Whitney Moran's jaunty, seaside-inspired text is matched by rollicking yet soft-edged illustrations by Josée Bisaillon?[who] captures the sea?s many moods with swirls of colour…. This Maritime tale offers a lively and unique way for any young seafarer with a new sibling and for landlubbers too.
―Canadian Children's Book News

I Want To Build a Seahouse is a heartfelt but also humourous story time piece for school and public librarians to share.
―CMReviews.com

Filled with warmth and whimsy, Whitney Moran's debut picture book is a playful, spirited tale. Rollicking rhymes dance blithely off each page as the seafaring adventuress envisions her new nautical life. With a lilting lyricism, the text is vibrant and energetic and captures a sense of exuberance while also subtly and sensitively depicting the conflicting emotions that a child experiences with the arrival of a new sibling.
―Atlantic Books Today

I want to build a seahouse
A place that’s just for me…

In a lighthouse on the sea lives a young girl who is about to become a big sister. Trouble is, she doesn’t want a little sister. With her peaceful life disrupted, the girl’s only option is to run away—and build her very own seahouse! With a foghorn for a doorbell and a fence of fishing rope, windows made of sea glass, buoys to help it float—and a pirate flag for safety (of course), she’ll have everything she needs.
The girl imagines all of the adventures she’ll have, talking parrot in tow: harvesting seaweed from her garden; telling ghost stories to merfolk; charting the tides and sailing by moonlight. But there’s a loneliness that creeps in whenever she thinks of her family back on land. And there’s those pesky stormy seas to consider…
A poetic ode to the childhood yearning for freedom, sprinkled with new-sibling jealousy, the debut picture book by editor Whitney Moran, whimsically illustrated with a magnificent coastal palette by award-winning artist Josée Bisaillon, is a heartfelt story of family and independence, and a celebration of imagination and the natural world.

Whitney Moran has always lived by the sea, and never too far away from a lighthouse. She is the managing editor of Nimbus Publishing and Vagrant Press in Kjipuktuk (Halifax, Nova Scotia) and makes her home in a seahouse in West Dover with her partner and their Old English Sheepdog.

As a young girl, Josée Bisaillon loved drawing cats and houses. She enjoyed school and always returned home full of stories to tell. She pursued her education all the way to university, where she fell in love with illustration. Since then, scissors and brushes in hand, Josée has illustrated more than 40 picture books, including the Marilyn Baillie Award―winning The Snow Knows.