This engaging picture book glows with the feeling of summer holidays. Popular author-illustrator Maryann Kovalski, who divides her time between Toronto and New York, sets her latest story about the plump bear Omar and his ursine friends in an idyllic country setting, at a pond where every lily pad holds a cheerful frog. After the end-of-school party, where the teacher gives each of her students the perfect present, swimming is the activity of the day. Unfortunately, Omar finds that he doesn’t excel at swimming. At the same pond in winter in Omar on Ice (1999), Omar was very good at skating, but those skills don’t transfer to swimming, and as in the previous book, Omar finds himself frustrated about being unable to do something well.

The pathos of Omar’s mishaps at the swimming hole is laced with humour, particularly in the funny illustrations of Omar sinking, splashing, and disrupting the frogs. Omar’s real problem comes when he mounts the diving platform with visions of performing an elegant swan dive, and finds instead that he cannot move at all, and has to crawl back down the steps to security. His friends, however, are encouraging rather than mocking, and eventually, in concentrating on helping his friend Elsie, Omar is distracted from his fear and overcomes it.

The whole feeling of this book is one of gentle support to a young child who is having a hard time with swimming. Its message of encouragement about accepting but also surmounting one’s fears is obviously applicable to many life experiences.

Kovalski’s sunny watercolours evoke the pleasure of being outdoors in summer, and her expressive drawings of Omar, in his pink-tinted swimming goggles and red polka-dot trunks, make him both a comic and a very sympathetic hero.