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*Swimmy* written & illustrated by Leo Lionni

 
Also by Leo Lionni:

A Color of His Own (Spanish-English bilingual edition)

Little Blue and Little Yellow [board book]

Six Crows

Little Blue and Little Yellow (50th Anniversary Edition)

Cornelius

Fish is Fish

Nicolas, Where Have You Gone?

Tico and the Golden Wings

Alexander and the Wind-Up Mouse
 
Swimmy
written & illustrated by Leo Lionni
ages 4-8 32 pages Dragonfly Books 1973 [reprint] Paperback    

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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  Sharon Schulz-Elsing/2005 for curled up with a good kid's book  






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