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Swimmy, another of Leo Lionni's Caldecott Honor-winning books, beat Finding Nemo to the little-fish-alone-in-the-deep punch. The lone black fish in a school of red, Swimmy is faster than his siblings. When a hungry tuna fish gulps down all the little red fish, Swimmy's quickness saves him.
Though he is lonely and scared in the ocean depths, the marvels of the sea - illustrated in dreamy, wondrous watercolors - cheer him. Lionni chooses words as carefully as colors from his palette, drawing us into Swimmy's magnificent world:
a forest of seaweeds growing from sugar-candy rocks...an eel whose tail was almost too far away to remember...and sea anemones, who looked like pink palm trees swaying in the wind.
Then Swimmy discovers another school of little red fish, too frightened by bigger predators to leave their underwater cave. Swimmy concocts a perfect solution so that they all might swim freely in the watery wonderland: they swim together to create the illusion of one large fish and chase the other big fish away.
The achievements to be had through teamwork and the strength of difference are subtly shared, and the dreamlike otherworld Lionni has created sings a siren song that draws children again and again to its wonders and to
its powerful lesson.
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Swimmy