National Library of New Zealand - Te Puna Mātauranga O Aotearoa Services to Schools - Supporting literacy and learning

Create Readers

We want to help create motivated and engaged young readers. This blog is about children's and YA literature (especially New Zealand), literacy research, and ways to get, and keep, kids reading.

Swim the fly by Don Calame


Three teenage boys and one cheeky summertime goal

EButterfly strokevery summer there was a goal to be set… Who knows when it started or why but Matt, Sean and Cooper always came up with something to accomplish before the start of the new school year. The goals were always based on some fantasy of male madness like the time they rode their bikes fifteen miles to Perry Lake to go skinny dipping or like (more progressively!!!) last year it was finding an illegal password for a porn site.

This year their goal was to see a real live girl in the buff. To Matt this seems more achievable when compared to his own personal summertime dare to ‘swim the fly’ or swim the hundred yard butterfly. This is to impress the gorgeous Kelly West.

This is a laugh a minute, laugh out loud, raucous and boisterous book full of boy talk and adolescent humour. The mad cap antics of the trio as they conspire and attempt to execute their plans to accomplish their goal are both hilarious and audacious. Kirkus Reviews lists it as a ‘word of mouth hit’. I am sure this book will get passed around the locker rooms. Boys will read it to find out if the three accomplish their goals.

Reviewed by Janice

image by wepalm92

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