When You Can Swim
by Jack Wong (Author) Jack Wong (Illustrator)
A reverent celebration of learning to swim among a diverse cast of children and families who each experience the mysterious joys of water in nature.
In this exploration of what it truly means to swim, expansive vignettes introduce sandpipers, tannin-soaked lakes, and the feeling of a small waterfall on sun-soaked shoulders. But what about those who are afraid of the water's mysterious ways and resist learning to swim?
Painting a compelling picture of the many joys and surprises that the water holds, artist and author Jack Wong has delivered an empowering, poetic journey that invites children to discover their confidence within to receive the warmth and wonder of the natural world.
Locate at a Library Near You WorldCat is the world's largest library catalog, helping you find library materials online.
Find books about:
Publishers Weekly
In visually inventive, lovingly finished pastel-and-watercolor spreads and sinuous lines of prose-poetry, debut author-illustrator Wong showcases myriad children encountering the joys of swimming. An adult accompanies a child in each spread, narrating in anticipatory text what awaits them both: "When you can swim, / first I'll take you to the ocean//... to receive the water's welcome." Throughout, varied figures spanning abilities, ages, body types, and skin tones float, stroke, and dive into and under water. Across numerous locales--a local pool, a sandy beach, an opulent lake, and a winding river--the figures spot sea stars, "listen to the clinking/ of waves passing in and out/ of a million pebbles," dive down deep into a lake "pitch-dark from tree bark," and, in a final, suspenseful sequence, swim together a long way out to an island with ripe blueberries. "Yes, this belongs to you, too," reads an author's note, in which Wong describes learning to swim as an adult. Such belonging is precisely the triumph that the story envisions, offering swimming's freedoms widely, and imagining the way that swimming can lend a feeling of autonomy and connection. Ages 4-8. Agent: Wendi Gu, Sanford J. Greenburger Assoc. (May)
Copyright 2023 Publishers Weekly, LLC Used with permission.Kirkus
JACK WONG has created a masterpiece drawn from his lived experience of growing up with a grandmother who spent her childhood in the rivers of Borneo and a mother -- growing up in late 1950s China -- who was forbidden to learn to swim. Born in Hong Kong and raised in Vancouver, Jack holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax, Canada, where he now lives with his wife and two cats.
JUV032000 - Juvenile Fiction | Sports & Recreation | General
Picture books for children
Parent and child
Swimming
