GRACIE & GRANDMA UNDER WATER

School is over for the day, and energetic Norwegian preschooler Gracie thinks she and Grandma are going home, but—surprise! They are going swimming instead. The ingenuous third-person narration charts the adventure, Gracie’s ebullience occasionally veering toward impatience or truculence but always calmly countered by Grandma’s savvy. The everyday elements of a trip to the pool—the changing room, retrieving forgotten equipment, the pre-swim shower and post-swim sauna (this is Norway, after all) and the swim itself are enlivened by Gracie’s imaginative play and Grandma’s easygoing way with her granddaughter. The broadly cartoonish images nicely capture Gracie’s liveliness; she’s depicted as a toothily-grinning, ponytailed tot whose face transforms with anxiety or desire to a larger-than-life version of herself—and just as quickly morphs back as her mood changes. The broad black lines against white background are judiciously colored to reinforce this effect. This import is the second in a series of four. (Picture book. 3-5)