It doesn’t happen often, an original book about swimming. Usually we see a child with a swimming cap standing numb along the edge of the pool. The water is too cold, the pool too big and the lifeguard too strict. They are stories that should evoke recognition in simple terms, but somehow never manage to capture the pedagogical hell that is swimming lessons. Those stories seem to be mainly for five-year-olds who need to be persuaded to step out of the cold bath week after week. Usefulness transcends pleasure. Eat your cheese sandwich, grab your bike, don’t complain, everyone goes to swimming lessons, or do you sometimes want to take your bands in the sea this summer?
Breathing training
But now there is the witty children’s book Water for fish by Puck Koper, in which Kaat lives on a sturdy fishing boat with six tough sailors. Kate would like to learn how to swim, but her sailors don’t like that: water is for fish. What if little Kate drowns? They come up with anything and everything to keep her safe. Like swimming lessons without putting a toe in the water. For example, she learns the help-I-can’t-swim swing, that cabbage makes you float and she even gets breathing training on dry land. “’Whoever wants to swim must be able to hold his breath.’ Wiebe fills the pan with seawater. “So”, he says, now put your head in it.”’
It is nice that this original story will also appeal to the somewhat older swimmers and not just the four and five year olds that swimming stories usually focus on. Koper, who completed her education at the Willem de Kooning Academy and followed her master’s degree in illustration at the Cambridge School of Arts, won with her debut Where Is Your Sister? immediately received the prestigious Bologna Ragazzi Opera Prima Award. That book has not yet been published in the Netherlands. Water is for fish is the Dutch-language debut of Koper, who received the Fiep Westendorp Stimulation Award in 2019.
Gentle sailors
In an uninhibited style, Koper manages to create a nice contrast between the tough, but oh-so-gentle sailors and the small, but oh-so-strong Kate. The text is not yet of the playful and daring level as the prints. The sentences lack some fantasy in word choice and also some play in sound and melody, but the original angle and the cheerful drawings make up for a lot. The sketchy, humorous style, which mainly consists of line drawings, is very reminiscent of the iconic style of Fiep Westendorp. Using simple lines and in some cases two spot colours, Koper conjures up a ship on which sailors live. They sometimes take up a whole page, but are still most reminiscent of clumsy, squeaky kittens that need comforting. It matters Water is for fish a hilarious book in which the enthusiasm for swimming splashes at you.