A picture book meditation on curiosity, wonder, and finding one’s way
In this lyrical picture book, readers follow one boy through his life as he returns to the seashore beside his home. The boy likes to think, and his thoughts turn into questions. He brings these questions to the sea. At times, he thinks he can hear the sea whisper to him: Dream. Love. Be.
So he does. He dreams—a young boy imagining all that he might do. He loves—a teenager, reaching out from a lonely place to make friends. He allows himself to just be—now grown, sharing the seashore with his daughter.
A celebration of quiet curiosity, The Boy and the Sea invites readers to ask questions and live their way into the answers.
Praise
“Listening to the voice inside you is the theme of this emotionally daring and poetic work….Bates’s moving, majestic art — rendered in gouache, watercolor and colored pencil — matches these stakes and raises them, showing not just the joy but the anguish.”The New York Times
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"Bates’ paintings are lovely, capturing foamy, cresting waves in varying degrees of vigor."Kirkus Reviews
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"Prose lines by Andros rock like waves. . .the sea offers endless transformations, which Bates portrays with compelling force."Publishers Weekly
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"The text has universal themes of longing for peace and answers to life’s questions. . .Watercolor seascapes are beautiful, with shells, crabs, and reflections in wet sand. A warm-hearted story that many will find solace in."School Library Journal
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“Bates's striking illustrations are rendered in shades of teal and cerulean with warm touches of coral, and her panoramic views of the sky above the shoreline capture light magnificently.”The Horn Book Magazine
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