Publisher Description

Fish dream of becoming Olympic swimmers...Olympic swimmers dream that they're fish. It's a very unlikely dream. Swimmers uses humor and poetry to show the reader how a page can be a deep, blue sea or an Olympic swimming pool and blurs the line between what is and isn't possible. Filled with quirky text and amusing illustrations of sturgeons in swimwear and tuna taking the gold, Swimmers merges the worlds of fish and people in this English-language translation of an entirely original book. About the PublisherTapioca Stories, a New York-based publishing house with Latin American soul, introduces young English readers to the finest Latin American children's books, originally written in Spanish and Portuguese.

Author Biography

María José Ferrada has a degree in Social Communication from the Universidad Diego Portales in Chile. She studied Applied Linguistics in Translation at the Universidad de Santiago de Chile and has a masters in Asian Studies from the Universidad de Barcelona. Her previous works include El idioma secreto (The Secret Language), which won the Orihuela Prize. Mariana Alcántara Pedraza was born in Mexico City in 1991. She has won the 29th Illustrator's Catalog at the 2019 Encuentro Valladolid Ilustrado International Children's and Young Adult Book Fair in Spain, and 3rd Prize at the Sharjah Children's Reading Festival in 2018. Her work was included in The White Ravens Catalogue in 2019.

Review

"The story is nonlinear, but the form supports the idea that water is a place of play and possibility. The normal formal rules we live by don't apply here -- we see a clock half-submerged in a fishbowl, fish in swimsuits and swimmers with fins, indicating a fluid interplay between worlds."--The New York Times

"...a gently absurdist excursion that turns a human wish--Olympic swimmers/ dream that they're fish--on its head...Debut creator Alcántara imagines an alternate universe of Olympic training that brims with quiet humor. Humans, fish, and droll human-fish hybrids smudged in lithograph-like grays stroke and kick and plunge through white pages that function visually as water. But instead of Olympian strength and endurance, the artist's sly underwater civilization is driven by creativity, invention, and hope."--Publishers Weekly

Review Quote

"The story is nonlinear, but the form supports the idea that water is a place of play and possibility. The normal formal rules we live by don't apply here -- we see a clock half-submerged in a fishbowl, fish in swimsuits and swimmers with fins, indicating a fluid interplay between worlds."--The New York Times "...a gently absurdist excursion that turns a human wish-- Olympic swimmers/ dream that they're fish --on its head...Debut creator Alc

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