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A Tribute from Eric Carle
Like all of Leo Lionni’s work, Swimmy is a magnificent blend of story and
graphics. Here, I feel, he has been more daring than ever. Both childlike and
sophisticated, the images in the underwater environment glide by like a film
across the screen. The jellyfish halfway through the book is similar to a potato
print done by a child and is as sophisticated as the best art of our time. And this
is true of all his creatures, big and small. I was especially intrigued by the forest
of seaweed growing from sugar-candy rocks. Both words and pictures blend
harmoniously. (Sugar-candy rocks! The Beatles would have loved that.) Lionni,
ever inventive, using the ornamental edge on a napkin or doily, painted
on it and made prints. The joy that Lionni must have felt while doing this couldn’t
possibly escape the viewer.
The story is as old as an Aesopian lesson of outwitting a bully. Here the big
bad tuna fish not only intimidates and scares a peaceful school of little fish but -
horrors! - gobbles them up. But don’t worry, help is on the way. And charmingly,
wittily, and most satisfyingly at that.
Recently I was asked whose picture books I could not live without. Guess my
answer? You are right.
DORSET COUNTY LIBRARY
For my friend Alfredo Segre who gave Swimmy his name.
Dorset County
Library
Askews & Holts 2015
£6.99
by Leo Lionni
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A happy school of little fish lived in a corner of the sea somewhere.
They were all red. Only one of them was as black as a mussel shell.
He swam faster than his brothers and sisters. His name was Swimmy.
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One bad day'a tuna fi§H, swift, fierce and very hungry, came darting
through the waves. In one gulp he swallowed all the little red fish.
Only Swimmy escaped.
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He swam away in the deep wet world. He was scared, lonely and very sad.
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But the sea was full of wonderful creatures, and as he swam from marvel
to marvel Swimmy was happy again.
He saw a medusa made of rainbow jelly...
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strange fish, pulled by an invisible thread...
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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, hidden in the dark shade of rocks and weeds, he saw a school of
little fish, just like his own.
“Let’s go and swim and play and SEE things!” he said happily.
“We can’t,” said the little red fish. “The big fish will eat us all.”
“But you can’t just lie there,” said Swimmy. “We must THINK of something.”
Then suddenly he said, “I haye it!”
“We are going to swim all together like the biggest fish in the sea!”
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and when they had learned to swim like one giant fish, he said, “I’ll be the eye.”
And so they swam in the cool morning water and in the midday sun and
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chased the big fish away.
First published in Great Britain in 2015 by Andersen Press Ltd.,
20 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London SWIV 2SA.
Published in Australia by Random House Australia Pty.,
Level 3, 100 Pacific Highway, North Sydney, NSW 2060.
Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Pantheon Books,
a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 1963.
Copyright © 1963 by Leo Lionni, copyright renewed in 1991 by Leo Lionni.
Published by arrangement with Random House Children’s Books,
a division of Random House, Inc. New York, New York, U.S.A.
The rights of Leo Lionni to be identified as the author and illustrator of this
work have been asserted by him in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved.
Printed and bound in China by C&C Offset Printing Co., Ltd.
10 987654321
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data available.
ISBN 978 1 78344 175 4
MIX
Paper from
responsible sources
.JlS FSC® C008047
Deep in the sea there lives a happy
school of little fish. Their watery world
is full of wonders, but there is also
danger, and the little fish are
afraid to come out of hiding...
until Swimmy comes along.
V w'- •'
Swimmy shows his friends
how, with ingenuity
and teamwork, they
can overcome
any danger
UK £6.99
ISBN 978-1-78344-175-4
9 781783441754
www.andersenpress.co.uk
