Wonderful Win: Swim the Fly

Swim the Fly by Don Calame

Publisher: Candlewick Press

I won this at YA Book Central. Great place to go when looking for YA or kid's books!

About the book: Matt Gratton and his two best friends, Sean and Coop, always set themselves a summertime goal. This year's? To see a real-live naked girl for the first time. But as far as Matt is concerned, they'd have better luck finding the lost city of Atlantis. None of the three has ever even asked a girl out, and the fact that they're the least athletic swimmers on the Rockville swim team (and that's counting the seven-year-olds) doesn't relaly help their chances.

But seeing a girl in the buff starts to seem like child's play compared to the other summertime goal Matt sets for himself: to swim the 100-yard butterfly (the hardest stroke known to God or man) in order to impress Kelly West, the hot new girl on the swim team. So what if he can't manage a single lap, let alone four? He's got the whole summer to perfect his technique. What could possibly go wrong?

Debut novelist Don Calame makes a huge splash with this hysterically funny, utterly authentic teen comedy. Prepare to cheer on Matt, Sean, and Coop as they navigate the treacherous waters of adolescence - and try to keep this summer from being one big belly flop. (from the book jacket)

About the author: Don Calame is an accomplished screenwriter who has worked with Marvel Studios, the Disney Channel, Lionsgate, Universal Studios, and Paramount Pictures. Over the years, he has been a bike mechanic, a supermarket cashier, a newspaper delivery boy, an ice-cream scooper, a wedding videographer, a musical-instrument salesman, and an elementary-school teacher. But not necessarily in that order.

About Swim the Fly, he says "This novel began as a short piece I wrote several years ago about an incident that happened to me when I was a teenager on the swim team. (Yes, I have the collection of green fifth-place ribbons to prove it.) I tucked the story away and promptly forgot about it until my wife gently nudged me - thirty-six times - to expand it into a book. I'm grateful she was so persistent, because I've never had so much fun writing something in my life."

Don Calame was born in New York and now lives in British Columbia with his wife, his stepson, and their two dogs. This is his first novel. (from the book jacket)

Swim the Fly
Publisher/Publication Date: Candlewick Press, April 2009
ISBN: 978-0-7636-4157-3
352 pages

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