Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Annelie Geissler
Categories
Children’s picture books

WHEN YOU CAN SWIM

Jack Wong

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.

Asian Canadian artist and author 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. An empowering, poetic modern classic, this is a book that fills readers with the wonder and confidence needed to overcome their fears of the water. In expansive vignettes, we meet sandpipers, tannin-soaked lakes, the feeling of a small waterfall on one's shoulders. WHEN YOU CAN SWIM invites children into the warmth and wonder of the natural world and its watery splendors. At the same time, children will experience the joyousness that nature's lessons teach us through its beauty. Born in Hong Kong and raised in Vancouver, Jack Wong 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. He has a few other books lined up for the future, including ALL THAT GROWS (Groundwood 2024, World), HIDDEN WORDS (Annick, 2024, World), and an untitled picture book biography on Yo Yo Ma written by James Howe of Bunnicula fame, (Abrams, World). You can find his website here: https://jackwong.ca/

Available products
Book Published 2023-05-02 by Orchard Books / Scholastic

Comments

[A] MARVELOUS book with its GLORIOUS poetry and SPECTACULAR pastel and watercolor illustrations offers an INSPIRING of what is possible when someone conquers their fear of the water and dares to swim in the ocean, a pond, a lake, a canal, a swimming pool.

In watercolors and pastels, this picture book EXTOLS the future joys of swimming in many different locales.

With POETIC text and GORGEOUS, INCLUSIVE illustrations, Wong invites readers to learn how to swim?to conquer fear of the water, and also to reclaim aquatic spaces for Brown, Black, and differently abled bodies.This isn't just a book about swimming but also 'about our ideas of the world'; it's a manifesto that 'this belongs to you, too.

A gorgeously rendered love letter to swimming and the magical experiences that it can unlock. Read more...

STUNNINGLY ILLUSTRATED and LYRICAL.

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...

This EXQUISITELY ILLUSTRATED picture book celebrates all the wonder and adventure to be found when you sink your body into water.

Spanning numerous locales - including a local pool, a sandy beach, and a winding river - this immersive telling by Wong showcases myriad children encountering the joys of swimming. Each body of water is generously detailed in pastel and watercolor, while sinuous prose offers up emotive ambiance, for example describing a lake "pitch-dark from tree bark." These scenes, and a final suspenseful sequence, personify the way that swimming can offer feelings of autonomy, connection, and freedom. Read more...

Jack's flight to ALA was cancelled so he ended up missing the Scholastic event where he was supposed to speak, but he made a video at an airport hotel and apparently it stole the show. This video beautifully captures his intentions for the book Read more...

...readers explore the joys of swimming in various bodies of wateroceans, ponds, lakes, rivers and more - in a text set primarily in conditional statements (the "when you can swim" of the title), as spoken by a parent to a child. This phrase is a refrain that conveys the abundant possibilities and delights of moving in the water...