Our Pool by Lucy Ruth Cummins

Pure summer fun. Kirkus Star review

"Everyone is sweating, and smiling, and skip stepping toward ... OUR POOL."

"First stop is the locker room, where clothes come off lickety-split and swim suits go on luckety-spitter."

The pool is like "An ice-cold bowl of City People soup."

"You can feel TALL in the shallow end. And OH-SO-SHORT in the deep end."

This is a joyous, noisy, fun book with the most vibrant illustrations in bright Fluro colours. And the way the text is presented in capital letters it just begs to be read aloud.

While I was in Melbourne this week I took the opportunity to spend a couple of hours in the narrm ngarrgu Library which opened just one year ago. One of the books I read was Our Pool and it 'blew me away'. Click the LOOK button the publisher site to see inside this book. You can see all the pages in this video but do try to find the book to read to your group - that would be way better than just showing this video. 

Publisher blurb: 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.

Image source NPR (listen to an interview with the author)

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 is also the author-illustrator of Stumpkin, Vampenguin, Dalmartian: A Mars Rover’s Story, 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.