Starred Review for Publishers Weekly

"Author and artist are as inextricably linked as the father and son they portray in this moving meditation on the importance of memories and tradition," wrote <EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">PW in our Best Books citation. Ages 4-8. <EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">(Apr.)

ALA Booklist

A delirious verbal build-up a la "This is the house that Jack built" is matched by the calligraphic exuberance of images inspired by Chagall and Picasso. A boy and his father go fishing, a journey to a "secret place" to "catch the air . . and catch the breeze!" When Dad notes that the streetlights look like moons and the trees like green soldiers, they metamorphose in the pictures. As father and son cast their lines, the child asks about the house his father lived in when he was a boy. Then the images pile one upon another: the house with a red roof, the green fields, and the clear river, as the boy casts his line to pull in a sliver of sky, a slice of sun, a bubble of breeze. The illustrations grow as wild and lush as the words, building a memory palace for father and son. Going home, the parent and child truly catch the air, the breeze, and all of the father's memories: "And we caught a father, / and we caught a boy, / who learned to fish." Intimate and imaginative, as one would expect from a talented author and illustrator.

Horn Book

A boy and his father go on a fishing trip, during which they catch imaginative things like a bubble of breeze, a sliver of sky, and the father's recollections of the house he grew up in and the way he learned to fish. The overwritten text is florid and hyper-stylized, but Raschka's flowing, busily textured, and vibrantly colored paintings capture the mood the text misses.

Kirkus Reviews

A father shows his son how to "catch" something far better than fish in Newbery-winner Creech's ( The Wanderer , p. 379, etc.) first picture book. The young narrator recalls an outing—a journey, as his father promises, to a secret place that turns out to be a riverbank where bubbles of breeze, slices of sun, and vivid memories of another boy and another time hover, waiting to be pulled in on the child's hookless fish line. With dancing swirls and dabs of color, bodies arching across spreads as gracefully as dolphins, and images of past and present flowing together, Raschka ( Ring! Yo?, 306, etc.) exuberantly echoes and amplifies the intensity of the shared experience. At the father's suggestions, streetlights become tiny moons; trees in a row transform into soldiers; and recollections of a boyhood home, other fields, and another father swim into view. Creech's prose is rich in flowing rhythms, tinged with sentiment, and no less replete with evocative images than the pictures. " Oh,' my father said again. / Where is that father / and that boy?' / I reeled in my line. / Right here,' I said, / and he turned to look at me, / as I cast my line again / so high, so far." A rare episode, with layers of meaning for readers of several generations. (Picture book. 6-8)

School Library Journal (Tue Feb 28 00:00:00 CST 2023)

K-Gr 3-A father and son go fishing to "catch the air" and to "catch the breeze" and readers see some of the many threads that connect the generations in this poetic story. As they drive through the dark city into the bright country morning, the man's words and Raschka's pictures lead the boy and readers to see everyday objects differently and to imagine the past. Streetlamps become moons and trees become soldiers. The father describes his boyhood home and explains that his father took him fishing. When the father muses about what happened to the boy he had been and the father he had, his son replies that they are "right here" and readers will feel that it is true and will continue to be true through the generations. As the text builds images, Raschka's exuberant, Chagallesque illustrations seem to float in color-splashed circles around it on some pages, reinforcing the cyclical theme. Later, they form a figure eight connecting the father and son, and on the final page they form a valentine surrounding and "catching" the pair. While the text and images are evocative and memorable, this book is likely to have more appeal to adults than to concrete-minded youngsters. Fanciful conceits such as catching "a slice of yellow sun" and a "white white cloud" may be more confusing than meaningful to a young audience. Still, it is a moving celebration of a father-and-son relationship. Encourage children to compare and contrast it with Jane Yolen's Owl Moon (Philomel, 1987) for an interesting early-grade literature lesson.-Louise L. Sherman, formerly at Anna C. Scott School, Leonia, NJ Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.