Swim Team

Swim Team focuses on Bree, an African-American middle school student who recently moved to Florida from New York with her father. 

She is anxious about starting life in a new place and in a new school, and she really does not want to do anything that involves swimming. However, she ends up having to face her fears and learn to swim because it is literally the only elective that fits her schedule. It turns out, she's got of lot of potential and even makes her swim team, the Mighty Manatees.

The middle school she attends is under-funded and in danger of losing its swimming facilities, but the community values competitive swimming highly, which opens a year-long competition with the dominant private school in order to save their pool and program. Not just a typical underdog story, though it does have many of the positive components of the genre, this book also touches on friendship, family relationships, as well as the history of race and class relations in the community. It is a multi-faceted, complex story that I found both moving and touching. It also features a lot of heart and a good sense of humor. This is a superlative graphic novel for middle school students.

This book is the creation of Johnnie Christmas, who has created a number of other graphic novels for both adults as well as younger readers, including Firebug and the Angel Catbird series. He spoke about his work on Swim Team in this interview.

A Coretta Scott King Honor Title and a National Book Award Finalist, Swim Team has received many glowing reviews. In their starred review Kirkus Reviews called it "deeply smart and inspiring story." In another starred review Publishers Weekly wrote, "Challenging the idea that 'Black people aren’t good at swimming,' this middle grade debut from Christmas (the Angel Catbird series, for adults) details segregation’s generational impact through a warmhearted story of community, Black diasporic identity, and learning, all portrayed in kinetic contemporary art." Esther Keller opined, "The bright artwork with vivid sunny colors and fine details in each panel, brings the story to life."

Swim Team was published by Harper Alley, and they offer a preview and more here.