SWIMMING HOME

A school of alewives migrates from the ocean to an inland lake to spawn.

Led by Pesca, the river herrings head north, swimming in parallel with the Canada geese. They pass a pod of porpoises and a humpback whale before turning toward the coast. They are spotted by a boy out in a rowboat with his father, who tells his son about the old alewife fishery, now moribund due to plummeting numbers. Once in a stream, Pesca and her school evade an eagle and a heron, and they navigate a beaver dam before pulling up short where a road has been constructed over the stream; the culvert through which the stream now flows is too high for the fish to reach. Happily, the boy and his father spot them and are able to use buckets to lift the fish over the road and into the lake. Raye’s soft, bright paintings depict the journey, varying perspective to give readers a sense of scale and drama, as with an intense close-up of the eagle’s talons. Perhaps unintentionally, the story leaves readers with a real conundrum: Even the most optimistic are likely to feel that trusting in passersby with buckets to save a fishery bodes ill for its long-term survival. An author’s note provides background on both alewives and anadromous fish, but it offers only faint hope.

An ecological cautionary tale that perhaps errs a little too much on the side of caution