Swimmy
Swimmy is a picture book by Leo Lionni that was first published in the USA in 1963. The German-language edition was translated by James Krüss in 1964 by Middelhauve Verlag in Cologne.
The Italian-American artist wrote the text and designed the illustrations. In the German translation, the work was awarded the German Youth Book Prize (nowadays Youth Literature Prize) in 1965.
action
The little black fish Swimmy lives happily in a school of red fish. When it is eaten by a larger fish, it leaves its home and experiences adventures in the ocean, meets many other sea creatures (including jellyfish and an eel) until it finds a new school of red fish. For fear of being eaten by larger fish, the small fish form a group in the shape of a large fish, and Swimmy, whose idea was the whole, plays the eye. So the fish can swim across the sea without fear. The little (or bigger) reader is conveyed: “Together we are strong, even if we are small.” / “The whole is more than the sum of its parts” (see: Emergence ).
Lionni tells here, as in " Frederick ", a story with a " parabolic (m) character" and "own moral teaching". Swimmy is an example of a multi-addressed children's book, i.e. aimed at children and adults.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Reiner Wild (ed.): History of German children's and youth literature. 2nd supplemented edition, Metzler, Stuttgart et al. 2002, ISBN 3-476-01902-0 , p. 321.