SWIMMERS, by María José Ferrada. Illustrated by Mariana Alcántara. Translated by Kit Maude.
THE SUMMER OF DIVING, by Sara Stridsberg. Illustrated by Sara Lundberg. Translated by B.J. Woodstein.
SWIM TEAM: Small Waves, Big Changes, by Johnnie Christmas.
“What do you think about when you think about swimming?” I asked this recently of a classroom of high school students, and though their answers ranged widely — “fun,” “a little bit of fear,” “family,” “summer” — one answer led the pack: “freedom.” I love that our human relationship with water spurs conversations about so much more.
Two new picture books and a graphic novel treat swimming as an expansive state of being, slippery with promise. They entice young readers of various ages to interact with the world in unconventional ways.
The idea for “Swimmers” began with charcoal, collage and fluorescent ink artwork by Mariana Alcántara, to which María José Ferrada added poetic fragments that tell a fanciful story about fish dreaming of becoming Olympic swimmers, and Olympic swimmers dreaming that they’re fish.
The story is nonlinear, but the form supports the idea that water is a place of play and possibility. The normal formal rules we live by don’t apply here — we see a clock half-submerged in a fishbowl, fish in swimsuits and swimmers with fins, indicating a fluid interplay between worlds.
“The fish all wake up at the same time, just when they’ve finished the 150-meter race. Even though it’s never a dream they want to wake up from, they aren’t sad. … It’s a dream that has been dreamed by fish since the world was the world and the sea was the sea, and it always will be.”
The ability to imagine that things can someday be different is critical for Zoe, the young girl at the center of “The Summer of Diving,” the second picture book from Sara Stridsberg, an acclaimed Swedish novelist and playwright.
The book opens with Zoe and her mother at the breakfast table one morning, rendered in the lush, color-saturated art of Sara Lundberg, winner of both the Swedish Book Award and the August Prize. Zoe’s father is suddenly, inexplicably missing: “A long time passes before I find out where he’s gone. Maybe everyone else has known all along.” The suspension of knowing stretches across the first few pages, poignantly evoking the all-too-common childhood feeling that no one tells you anything. The truth is revealed when mother and daughter arrive at a hospital to visit Zoe’s father, who is suffering from severe depression.
Zoe puzzles over the locked doors, the “angels” who watch over her father, the sadness that holds him down. Later, an intriguing woman named Sabina appears, wearing a red swimsuit under a blue bathrobe. “Shall we swim?” she asks Zoe.
No pool? No sea? No matter. Awash in imagination, she spins a globe. “Sabina has been in the World Championships in Toronto and one day she will swim across the Pacific Ocean.”
Days unspool into seasons, and Sabina becomes an unexpected angel for Zoe, who visits even when her father is too sad to see her. In the spring, Sabina and Zoe practice dives from a park bench and swim strokes in the grass.
It’s not clear what Sabina’s illness is, but sometimes Zoe watches her disappear: “She dives into another world. I wait until she comes back.” Zoe asks Sabina if her father will come back, too. “How would I know that? I’m not psychic, am I?” Sabina responds with characteristic bluntness. There are no easy answers. But the waiting is easier with a friend.
“When my dad finally comes, Sabina and I have swum around the world a few times,” Zoe tells us. “My dad is like the trees. In the winter he pretends to be dead. Then he is reborn in the summer.” Stridsberg’s child’s-eye view of mental illness conjures how young people explain gaps in knowledge, their openness to unlikely friendships, the vulnerability of a formative age — and what memories of it survive into adulthood.
Memory, both individual and collective, is vital to connecting multiple generations of “swim sisters” in “Swim Team,” a sparkler of a middle grade graphic novel from the comics creator Johnnie Christmas (best known for collaborating with Margaret Atwood on the “Angel Catbird” series and for his graphic-novel adaptation of William Gibson’s lost “Alien 3” screenplay). His latest protagonist, Bree, is navigating a move from New York to Florida, a change of school and her usually super-attentive single dad’s failure to show up for her ever since he started his time-consuming new job. When she finds out that the only elective still open at the new school is Swim 101, she must confront one of her biggest fears: water.
Etta, Bree’s elderly upstairs neighbor, is a former swim champion. After she rescues Bree from nearly drowning in their apartment complex’s pool, she teaches her to swim, and that’s just for starters.
Swimming is joyful, but what swimming looks like in America reflects the history of pools and beaches as white-dominated spaces of privilege and exclusion, especially for Black Americans. Christmas brings all this to rich life in Etta, whose complicated girlhood as a Black swimmer motivates Bree.
Enter the Enith Brigitha Manatees. Bree’s new school is named after the first Black woman to win an Olympic medal in swimming, and its swim team is the underdog battling a threatened pool closure and a snooty rival school’s team. Characters are drawn with warmth and personality — even villains contain multitudes.
Christmas writes from the heart. When he was young, he too survived a near drowning. Questions of belonging, ability, racial justice and who gets to swim are handled with thought and care. This is Christmas’s debut work for middle graders, but its nuanced storytelling and visual appeal will have outsize reach and meaning beyond this age group.
Growing up, I loved my swim team, and the lessons I took away from the experience — how to be a good teammate and citizen, how to make sure water buoys us all — stay with me. I love “Swim Team” for the same reasons. It took me a long time to figure out how to talk about the importance of being in a swim community with diverse bodies of all shapes and shades when I was a kid. I would have adored this book back then. I’m thrilled it’s here now.
Bonnie Tsui is the author of “Why We Swim.” Her debut children’s book, “Sarah and the Big Wave: The True Story of the First Woman to Surf Mavericks,” was published last year.
SWIMMERS, by María José Ferrada | Illustrated by Mariana Alcántara | Translated by Kit Maude | 32 pp. | Tapioca Stories | $19.95 | Ages 6 to 9
THE SUMMER OF DIVING, by Sara Stridsberg | Illustrated by Sara Lundberg | Translated by B.J. Woodstein | 48 pp. | Triangle Square | $18.95 | Ages 5 to 8
SWIM TEAM: Small Waves, Big Changes, by Johnnie Christmas | 256 pp. | HarperAlley | Cloth, $21.99. Paper, $12.99. | Ages 8 to 12
