The Whale in my Swimming Pool, disarmingly fun picture book

The Whale in my Swimming Pool is effectively named and cuts to the chase on the third page. A young boy is eager to hop into the swimming pool but finds that there is a whale already in it. It’s one of those round, plastic pools, so of course the whale takes up more than three times the size of the pool. From here the book really cooks and is clever, imaginative and so very simple that it’ll leave even the most frustrated child with a smile.

Simple is tough to do. If it’s too simple then it’s a baby book.  If it’s too advanced or wordy then the book is aiming for too high a demographic and it won’t hit any of them.

The Whale in My Swimming Pool straddles the line between picture book and young reader better than others by doing a number of things very well.

The illustrations in the book take up the entire page. I love it when the entire page is filled with glorious color. In this case most of the pages take place in telling the story with the slightly retro artwork.  There are a couple pages that concentrate on the whale where there is white space around the whale. This is effective because it opens the area up and gives you the illusion that he’s much bigger than he is.

The story in the book is simple, yet our lead character, who never even has a name, manages to go through lots of emotions. He’s disbelieving that that there really is a whale in his pool. He tries to bargain the whale out of there, guilt trip him to the neighbor’s pool, pay him to leave, uses heavy machinery, asks nicely and even plays games with the whale. But the whale doesn’t budge at all.

Just when the little boy is at his wits end he gets the idea to put his inner tube on the whale’s water spout. From there the whale blows water and he proceeds to ride the water spout up and down, having a blast until he has to go inside.

Once he goes inside he sees a bear who has fallen asleep in his bed. This plot device sometimes works in children’s books and other times not so much. The Whale in my Swimming Pool builds up so much giddy good will and is so happy that in this case it’s a fun, welcome way to end the book. It’s such a happy book that when the boy is frustrated over the fact that the bear snores you’re hoping that another book is here to chronicle the story.

It’s also short enough to where you can re-read it a couple of times for a good-night book. There aren’t too many words in the book, but what there are lend themselves to reading in a very fun manner for young children. Kids 5 or up might be able to read some of the words by themselves initially and then most of them after the book is read a couple of times. At the end of the day, The Whale in my Swimming Pool is lots of fun for kids and parents-and that’s a pretty rare thing to find in children’s book.