Our Pool

by Lucy Ruth Cummins (Author) Lucy Ruth Cummins (Illustrator)

Reading Level: K − 1st Grade

On a hot day, people come from all over the city to spend the day at the pool in this joyful picture book that's a love song to summer, the city, community, and staying cool!

Today is a pool day in the city! The sun is shining, so what are you waiting for? Friends and family. Kids and grandparents. Big bodies and small bodies. Everybody is welcome at our pool! Get ready for swimming and splashing, zigzagging and dunking, and racing and laughing.

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Kirkus

Starred Review
Both the chatty, child-friendly text and the gouache, colored pencil, and digitally finished artwork ooze exuberance; Cummins' saturated colors and energetic, curving waves are utterly inviting.

Publishers Weekly

Starred Review

Public pools, those unsung heroes of public good, have found their bard in Cummins (Sleepy Sheepy). In vibrant gouache and colored pencil hues that are reminiscent of a schoolchild's paint set, initial pages show a variously inclusive parade of city dwellers "sweating, and smiling, and skip-stepping toward... OUR POOL!" As the illustrations move over, around, and under the be-goggled crowd in compositions ranging from reportorial to bird's-eye view, the story's kid narrator enthusiastically recounts the ritual-like pleasures of pool-going, from getting changed to getting in ("I'm the JUMP-RIGHT-IN! type") to breathless communal reactions over the sun's movements to a final, parting cannonball. In a cleverly executed conceit, the first-person narrator is never tied to a specific individual: when Mom insists on sunscreen, Cummins zooms in on four adult hands brandishing bottles and cans; when the narrator floats behind Mom "like a cape," readers see multiple parent-child pairs moving through the water in a line. It's a joyfully saturated vision of e pluribus unum shown via "an ice-cold bowl of City People Soup!" Ages 4-8. Agent: Emily van Beek, Folio Jr./Folio Literary Management. (June)

Copyright 2023 Publishers Weekly, LLC Used with permission.

Review quotes

 
Lucy Ruth Cummins
Lucy Ruth Cummins is an author, illustrator, and art director of children's books. She was happily paired with Jean Reidy for both Truman, which was named a New York Times Best Children's Book of 2019, and Sylvie. She also is the author-illustrator of Stumpkin, Vampenguin, Our Pool, and A Hungry Lion, or A Dwindling Assortment of Animals. Lucy has swum in creeks, streams, gorges, rivers, swimming holes, pools (above- and in-ground), lakes (both Great and Finger), decorative fountains, and oceans. Her very favorite place to swim, however, is at her community pool in Brooklyn with her sons and her neighbors.
Classification
Fiction
ISBN-13
9781534499232
Lexile Measure
-
Guided Reading Level
-
Publisher
Atheneum Books for Young Readers
Publication date
June 13, 2023
Series
-
BISAC categories
JUV023000 - Juvenile Fiction | Lifestyles | City & Town Life
JUV030060 - Juvenile Fiction | People & Places | United States
JUV074000 - Juvenile Fiction | Diversity & Multicultural
Library of Congress categories
Picture books
City and town life
Swimming pools

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