I just finished the picturebook Sakamoto's Swim Club by Julie Abery (#@juliedawnabery) and Chris Sasaki told in rhyme with interesting vocabulary (toil, poised) and phrases (tensions knock at Europe's door) inspired by a science teacher from Maui and the children he trained to be Olympic swimmers. After witnessing them swim in the sugar plantation irrigation ditches, he applied his knowledge of science and passion to lead the children into a swim team that inspired the world. A true story I had no knowledge of. What a beautiful example of perseverance, dedication, and dreaming big. Access and opportunity to learn how to swim requires some resources not always attainable. The dream to swim might begin running through a sprinkler in one's front yard, splashing through a city fire hydrant, or a swimming the current in a ditch surrounded by sugar cane and migrant workers.
This book is appropriate for readers K-8. A model for a strong setting lead
Valley Isle.
Lush terrain.
Migrant Workers
cutting cane.
Weave into Social Studies, Habits of Work, Athletes, Sports, and Hawaii learning. The illustrations are gorgeous. The colors, the details, the perspective of the characters and their views shown. Full bleeds and vignettes weave throughout in a fluent yet flexible manner. From the placement of the text, colors applied, the movement the lines offer, each page allows for a pause.
I like the idea of gathering text sets of many children's books with global and multicultural narratives about the same sport. Swimming is a sport I have begun to gather, and this gem, Sakamoto's Swim Club is one I will be adding to the text set-serving as a informational picturebook among the fiction favorites and diverse company of Get Set! Swim! by Jeannine Atkins & Hector Viveros Lee, Jabari Jumps by Gaia Cornwall, Saturday is Swimming Day by Hyewon Yum and Julian Is a Mermaid by Jessica Love.
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