Our Home Is the Sea

Reflective and light-filled as the sea at sunset, newcomer Luzak's painterly illustrations lend depth to Levinson's narrative about a young boy in Hong Kong who journeys home on his last day of school. Although his mother wishes him to be a schoolteacher, the boy is absolutely certain that he will be a fisherman like his father and his grandfather before him because their true home is the sea. This is not a story so much as a a portrait of a boy and the city through which he hurries to get to the sunlit water. The rich details of life in Hong Kong are exquisitely drawn. Crowded gray buildings, a blue-feathered peacock, an old man doing tai chi in the park, the boy's family crouched around bowls of congee and teaall introduce with subtle complexity and beauty and bustle of a culture so very different from our own. Ages 5-8. (September)