My Life With The Wave

A boy creates his own endless summer when he brings home a wave from the family's beach vacation in this splashy fantasy based on a story by Nobel Laureate Paz. The wave adores her new surroundings, spraying foam as she rushes through the household, floating with the boy and rocking him to sleep. But nature takes its course as the wave's moods turn out to be as 'changeable as the tide.' Paired with the expert text, Buehner's larger than-life depictions of the free-spirited wave sweep readers away to their own imaginary shores. Publishers Weekly An outlandish and original tale by Paz is cut and pressed into the picture-book format, for which Buehner provides wild images and, with Cowan, a humorous ending.... Kirkus Reviews Storytime audiences will be delighted by this unusual friendship... A celebration of imagination from beginning to end. School Library Journal Remember all those seashells you carted home from vacation? Imagine there was a wave you wanted to bring home, and finally your father said yes. Nobel Laureate Octavio Paz's story and Catherine Cowan's adaption of it follow the perile of such a choice. Sometimes the wave is the best playmate for the boy who has taken her home. Other times she is black and bitter: and she howls and twists in dark despair. The parents can't take it anymore. Finally, when the wave freezes, father and son lug her back to the beach. Maybe next year, the boy thinks, I'll bring home a cloud. Clouds are soft and cuddly..., outside his window lurks a giant cloud looking anything but. Children will live the relentless, hilarious, surreal logic of it all: If you did take a wave home, this what it would be like. -- Chicago Tribune, 2/298