Carly is nine-going-on-ten and she loves to dive - dive from the rocks at her family's cabin in the Gulf Islands, dive from the boards at the pool where she and her friends belong to the Dolphins Diving Club. She loves the feeling of floating up into the air and then dropping cleanly into the water with hardly a splash. She loves the feeling that she gets when everything goes just right. Then Carly invites her best friend Montana to spend the weekend at the cabin. They play on the beach, build forts and explore the island, waiting for the tide to get high enough so that they can dive off the rocks. And then when it does, Montana dives too deeply and hits her head on a submerged log. And Carly's world suddenly changes. Waiting to Dive is a sensitive, amusing, realistic account of a child's attempt to deal with tragedy. Carly is given to much exaggeration, dislikes her step-brother and -sister, has not yet come to terms with her father's death, and wears her emotions on her sleeve - in short, she is a very real young girl. The story she tells will resonate with young readers.