Pool

In this wordless debut, Korean artist Lee combines imaginative power and emotional restraint. With a murmur of shaded pencil, she draws a boy in a bathing cap and goggles standing alone beside a public pool. Swimmers arrive suddenly and crowd the water—some are all but indistinguishable from the blubbery inflatable toys they carry—taking up every available bit of space. Diving beneath them, the boy heads straight down. Now, Lee draws the boy and the world he discovers in full color. A girl his age swims toward him, and together they play and explore, swimming among schools of wildly improbable fish of scarlet and blue, fish with snouts like snorkels and fins like ferns. They play hide-and-seek among the sea vents, encounter more threatening fish, and then, deeper still, find themselves eye-to-enormous-eye with a placid, whalelike behemoth. When the two surface and exit the pool, they exchange a shy, intimate glance, silent testimony to all they’ve shared. It’s perhaps the quietest, least remarkable-seeming people, Lee suggests, who see what’s below the surface of the ordinary world. An auspicious and memorable debut. Ages 3–5. (May)