Ibby Honour List 2012
Nominated by the Flemish Children’s Jury 2012
Gied hates water. And swimming. Particularly swimming at school. Gied has noted down 70 tricks to avoid swimming classes in his secret notebook: the trick with the loo and the one where you have forgotten to bring your swimming shorts, for example. He always has the same seat on the bus and every week
on swimming day he sees the man with the pigeons, sitting on the bench by the pond. The man helps Gied to keep his head above water. Every week. It would be a disaster if the man with the pigeons weren’t there one day. Because then the swimming lessons would go wrong and Gied would sink down to the bottom for ever and ever. And that really would be a disaster, wouldn’t it?
