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    The Big Wave
    The Big Wave
    The Big Wave
    Ebook71 pages52 minutes

    The Big Wave

    By Pearl S. Buck

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    The classic tale of a Japanese boy orphaned by a tsunami from the author of The Good Earth, the first American woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.
    On a mountainside in Japan, two boys enjoy a humble life governed by age-old customs. Jiya belongs to a family of fishermen; his best friend, Kino, farms rice. But when a neighboring volcano erupts and a tidal wave swallows their village—including Jiya’s family—life as they know it is changed forever. The orphaned Jiya must learn to come to terms with his grief. Now facing a profoundly different life than the one he’d always taken for granted, he must decide on a new way forward. Written with graceful simplicity, The Big Wave won the Children’s Book Award of the Child Study Association of America when it was first released. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Pearl S. Buck including rare images from the author’s estate.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Media
    Release dateAug 21, 2012
    ISBN9781453263570
    The Big Wave
    Author

    Pearl S. Buck

    Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) was a bestselling and Nobel Prize–winning author. Her classic novel The Good Earth (1931) was awarded a Pulitzer Prize and William Dean Howells Medal. Born in Hillsboro, West Virginia, Buck was the daughter of missionaries and spent much of the first half of her life in China, where many of her books are set. In 1934, civil unrest in China forced Buck back to the United States. Throughout her life she worked in support of civil and women’s rights, and established Welcome House, the first international, interracial adoption agency. In addition to her highly acclaimed novels, Buck wrote two memoirs and biographies of both of her parents. For her body of work, Buck received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1938, the first American woman to have done so. She died in Vermont. 

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    Reviews for The Big Wave

    4/5

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    • 3/5
      Two friends, Kino and Jiya live in Japan. Kino's family farm the land on the side of a mountain. His best friend Jiya lives on the beach below where he fishes with his father. Kino fears the Volcano on his mountain and Jiya fears the sea might become angry. One day the bell at the castle begins to ring. Kino and his family rush outside. His father tells him this has happened once before and that the villagers below need to go to the castle. Kino sees several families or their children run to the castle. He waves to his friend Jiya. Jiya runs to the house of his friend Kino. There they watch as a giant wave wipes out all of the village and remaining people below, including Jiya's family. Given the choice to live with the old man in the castle or with his best friend's family, Jiya chooses his best friend's family. As time passes people begin to build on the beach again. Kino misses the beach and must make several decisions that not only affect him but the young girl he wants to marry.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      I read this book as a child, and though I didn't remember it until recently, Buck's gentle, assured writing of this story remained impressed on my mind. It is a story about two boys, friends, who live in Japan under the shadows of volcanoes and at the mercy of the sea. One day the big wave comes, and tragedy ensues. This book not only describes the Japanese mindset of enjoyment of life and bravery in death, but it resonates to all humanity...especially to those who have lived through a natural disaster and know that "Life is stronger than death."

      1 person found this helpful

    • 2/5
      Summary: A big wave is headed towards China and when everyone's house is flooded because of the tsunami, everyone needs somewhere to go....but where?Review: The reading list has got no taste.

    Book preview

    The Big Wave - Pearl S. Buck

    The Big Wave

    Pearl S. Buck

    Contents

    Chapter One

    Chapter Two

    Chapter Three

    Chapter Four

    A Biography of Pearl S. Buck

    Chapter One

    KINO LIVED ON A farm. The farm lay on the side of a mountain in Japan. The fields were terraced by walls of stone, each one of them like a broad step up the mountain. Centuries ago Kino’s ancestors had built the stone walls that held up the fields.

    Above all the fields stood the farmhouse that was Kino’s home. Sometimes he felt the climb was a hard one, especially when he had been working in the lowest field and he wanted his supper. But after he had eaten at night and in the morning, he was glad that he lived so high up because he could look down on the broad blue ocean at the foot of the mountain.

    The mountain rose so steeply out of the ocean that there was only a strip of sandy shore at its foot. Upon this strip was the small fishing village where Kino’s father sold his vegetables and rice and bought his fish. From the window of his room Kino looked down upon the few thatched roofs of the village, running in two uneven lines on both sides of a cobbled street. These houses faced one another, and those that stood beside the sea did not have windows toward it. Since he enjoyed looking at the waves, Kino often wondered why the village people did not, but he never knew until he came to know Jiya, whose father was a fisherman.

    Jiya lived in the last house in the row of houses toward the ocean, and his house did not have a window toward the sea either.

    Why not? Kino asked him. The sea is beautiful.

    The sea is our enemy, Jiya replied.

    How can you say that? Kino asked. Your father catches fish from the sea and sells them and that is how you live.

    Jiya only shook his head. The sea is our enemy, he repeated. We all know it.

    It was very hard to believe this. On hot sunny days, when he had finished his work, Kino ran down the path that wound through the terraces and met Jiya on the beach. They threw off their clothes and jumped into the clear sea water and swam far out toward a small island which they considered their own. Actually it belonged to an old gentleman whom they had never seen, except at a distance. Sometimes in the evening he came through the castle gate and stood looking out to sea. Then they could see him, leaning on his staff, his white beard blowing in the wind. He lived inside his castle behind a high fence of woven bamboo, on a knoll outside the village. Neither Kino or Jiya had ever been inside the gate, but sometimes when it was left open they had peeped into the garden. It was beautiful beyond anything they could imagine. Instead of grass the ground was covered with deep green moss shaded by pine trees and bamboos, and every day gardeners swept the moss with bamboo brooms until it was like a velvet carpet. They saw Old Gentleman walking under distant trees in a silver-gray robe, his hands clasped behind his back, his white head bent. He had a kind, wrinkled face, but he never saw them.

    I wonder if it is right for us to use his island without asking? Kino asked today when they reached its beach of smooth white sand.

    He never uses it himself, Jiya replied. Only the sacred deer live here.

    The island was full of sacred deer. They were not afraid, for no one hurt them. When they saw the two boys they came to them, nuzzling into their hands for food. Sometimes Kino tied a little tin can of cakes about his waist and brought

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