‘Stewie The Duck Learns To Swim’ Now Available On Video

Kim and Stew Leonard, Jr, have turned a personal tragedy into a personal mission to prevent childhood drownings.

Their son Stewie was 21 months old when he drowned in a swimming pool during a family vacation in 1989. The Leonards launched the Stew Leonard III Water Safety Foundation, which last year produced their book, Stewie the Duck Learns to Swim, a child’s first guide to water safety. This summer the foundation has released a video as a companion to the book.

Both versions are aimed at teaching 2- to 6-year-olds how to be safe near the water through the story of Stewie, a duck who wants to swim with the “big ducks,” but is prevented from going in the water by his older sisters until he learns the water safety rules. Stewie must learn the three main rules of water safety: Learn to swim, always wear a life vest, and have an adult watch you.

To transform the book to video, the Leonards teamed up with award-winning puppeteer Bill Diamond of Bill Diamond Productions, who includes among his credits work with Jim Henson, creator of the Muppets. Mr Diamond and his team brought the characters of the Stewie book to life on video through their unique style of puppetry creation and operation.

The statistics cannot be ignored. Drowning accidents are the second leading cause of injury-related death for children between the ages of 1 and 14 (after motor vehicle accidents), and the leading cause of accidental death for children under 5. This time of the year, especially, parents need to be more cautious than ever. About 350 children under 5 years old drown in pools each year nationwide, and over half of these incidents occur in June, July, and August. Well over half of children under the age of 4 who drown do so in residential swimming pools. A child can drown in the time it takes to answer a phone. Seventy-seven percent of victims have only been missing from sight for five minutes or less.

“Surprisingly, there is little information about water safety that is geared to children under 5 years old. We thought that if we created a lovable character like Stewie the Duck we could teach children about water safeaty in a fun way,” said Stew Leonard, Jr.

Mr Leonard is the president and CEO of Connecticut-based Stew Leonard’s grocery stores.

Proceeds from the sale of the $7.95 video go to various water-safety charities, including area YMCAs and Swim America, a national Swim America, a national learn-to-swim program. The book and video are available at 800-SAY-STEW (729-7839), or www.stewleonards.com, at www.amazon.com, at Barnes & Noble book stores in Connecticut and New York, and at Stew Leonard’s grocery stores in Norwalk and Danbury, and in Yonkers, N.Y.