• Age: 10 to 13
• Grade: 4 to 8
• Reading age: 7 to 10

Birch Hill Swim Club has a new coach and the team's star swimmer, eighth-grader Lasha Boyko, couldn't be more excited. Even though the lanky swimmer comes from an immigrant Ukrainian family of modest means, she dreams big. The coach has a track record of producing Olympians and Lasha wants to be her next star. The hitch is that she's one of the fiercest trainers in world. To achieve her lofty goals, Lasha must look within herself to find the strength. Can she be a champion?

VALLERY HYDUK swam competitively for twelve years. For nine of those years, she competed at the national level. At sixteen, she was ranked 16th in the world. She attended the University of Michigan on an athletic scholarship. Vallery now owns her own television production company in Toronto and writes for television, radio, and the Web. She is a member of the Ontario College of Teachers, Canadian Women in Communications, and the Canadian Film and Television Producers Association.

Vallery Hyduk's profile page

"Along with generous measures of information about competition swimming (delivered in context, not as info dumps), readers will get a solid sense of the inner toughness required to excel....Salutary reading for young athletes with big dreams."

Booklist Online (US)

"... a convincing picture of the life of a competitive swimmer... Swim to Win would be a good Rapid Read/High-Low for grades 5-8. "

CM: Canadian Review of Materials

"Vallery Hyduk is a former competitive swimmer, and it certainly shows in Swim to Win... Lorimer is obviously succeeding with this series of action-driven novels which encourage young readers to 'Get in the Game!' "

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