The Summer of Diving

Book excerpt: The award-winning and beautiful story of a child coping with her father's absence. The book tackles a difficult subject with great tenderness, validating a child's experience of a parent suffering from depression. "This poignant, gentle book . . . will be immensely helpful to anyone caring for the child of someone with major depression. It fills an important gap in literature for young children."—Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday Demon (winner of the National Book Award) and Far From the Tree Zoe’s dad isn’t home. She still sees him in photographs, laughing and playing tennis, but for now she can only visit him in a building where everyone looks sad and the walls are an ugly pink color. Some days Zoe’s dad is too sad to see her, but she goes to the hospital anyway. While waiting she meets Sabina who invites her to swim across the world. Zoe’s not sure it’s possible, but Sabina tells her, “A girl can do everything she wants.” Even though Sabina sometimes dives deep into her own thoughts, the two of them swim around the world many times that summer, until eventually Zoe’s dad is ready to come home. The Summer of Diving is a book full of imagination and hope with a tender child’s-eye understanding of the world. Stridsberg’s story and Lundberg’s lush and colorful paintings reflect and validate a child’s feelings of loss and longing for closeness when a parent’s joy for living temporarily fades.