Booklist Online: More than 130,000 book reviews for librarians, book groups, and book lovers - from the trusted experts at the American Library Association

Cindy and Lynn: We first wrote about Swim the Fly (Candlewick, April 2009) back in November at our original blog site, and you can read the complete comments here. But this funny book has done laps in our brains since then and we wanted to reprise our enthusiasm for it now that its pub date is approaching. As Lynn said at the time,

“I think it is extremely hard to write humor but this first novel makes it look easy. Fifteen-year-old Matt and his two buddies have a tradition of setting a summer goal. This year’s is to see a real-live naked girl. Add barbell disasters, laxative and fart jokes, a nudist colony and three bumbling buddies who steal your heart and you have a book tailor made for teen-age boys. There is lots of crude, snort-worthy humor here but there is also a sweetness to this story that will win over the most hard-hearted reader.”

In January at a Candlewick Preview breakfast at the American Library Association Midwinter Meetings we learned that marketing people will do anything to sell books in this economy. While Karen Lotz tried to deliver a serious presentation about this book, Jenny Choy was sporting a swim cap and Sharon Hancock watched on through swim goggles. We captured the moment and share it with all of you now. We later heard that author Don Calame wore little but a swim cap, goggles, and Speedo while presenting the book at a luncheon, and we’re sorry to have missed that soiree! Not to be outdone by the publisher and author, however, we at Bookends present to you some thematic photos of our own, featuring three of our West Ottawa High School (Holland, MI) Varsity swimmers (Dakota McCaw, Mathias Bares and Max Olson) and Coach J.P. having fun in the pool reading Swim the Fly. The book is making the rounds with the team, who wrapped up their season last weekend at the Michigan High School State Swim Meet.

As Cindy noted back in November, Matt’s efforts to get in shape enough to just finish the 100 yard butterfly for his team will have your sides hurting as much as his–but yours will be from laughing. And (we) just love Gramps. Truly. Every boy needs a gramps like him.”

Thanks to Dakota, Mathias, Max and Coach J.P. for playing along, and to Val Bares for taking these great pictures for us.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 23rd, 2009 at 8:46 am and is filed under Fiction, Gr. 9-12, Humor, Intergenerational Stories, Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.