Swimmy By Leo Lionni

Genre: Fiction
Publishing Info: Knopf Books for Young Readers; 32 pages
Awards or Honors received: Caldecott Award

Summary: Swimmy is a story about a fish who is different from his brothers and sisters. They are all red and Swimmy is black. A tuna fish comes along and eats all his brothers and sisters. Swimmy escapes because he is the fastest swimmer of his siblings. He is lonely and sad at first. Then he explores the big ocean and discovers many interesting ocean animals and plants. He meets a school of red fish just like his brothers and sisters in an anemone. They will not leave their anemone because they are scared to be eaten by larger fish. Swimmy wants them to go out and discover the amazing ocean. He formulates an idea for the fish to go out and discover the ocean without being scared. He teaches them to stay in a formation. The result is a big looking fish and Swimmy is the eye!

Personal rating and reason for rating: ****Great!A fantastic story! Children will fall in love with Swimmy. He loses his family, but never gives up hope of finding happiness! Children will admire his determination.

Reading level: 2.9
Interest level: K-2

Possible uses:
Writing: Create a booklet for each student in the shape of a fish with three sheets of paper behind the cover. Students will write the beginning, middle, and ending of the story on the three pages.

Art: Using water paint have students create an ocean moral of the different places Swimmy explored.

Science: Create an ocean vocabulary booklet for each student. Use terms from the story such as black mussel, anemone, etc. Students can write what the term means and draw an illustration.

Math: Have different length fish and students can measure the fish using linking cubes.

Potential Problems: None