Tiddler is the story of a naughty little fish who is constantly late for school.

The book is a colourful and well illustrated hardback with 32 pages written by the well regarded Children's laureate Julia Donaldson and drawn by her long-time collaborator Axel Scheffler.

Story:

When the daily rollcall of students is made at fish school, all confirm their attendance except the mischievious Tiddler who regularly provides an elaborate excuse for his tardiness, explaining he has been talking to mermaids or had found treasure. Whilst the class and teacher disbelieve him he is only a little bit late so nobody takes it too seriously, until one day when Tiddler doesn't come to school at all. After a dramatic problem he finds himself lost in the wide ocean and the only way he can find his way home is by following the trail of people discussing one of his elaborate made up stories.

Writing:

As with all of Donaldson's books, this appeals to youngsters and readers as it rhymes and generally has a constant enjoyable flow. The use of different sea creatures is well thought out and the story has a logical and enjoyable conclusion after a decent build up. There is repetition which is good to reinforce areas of the story and the entire thing flows simply but with constant build up to the amusing finale.

Illustration:

Scheffler has a whale of a time (Boom Boom!) drawing the wide array of fish and ocean mammals associated with the story, each page is colourful and packed full of interesting things to look at and enjoy, it is a brilliant accompaniment to the story and the colours appeal to youngsters.

Price:

The book is available on Amazon for £9.32, i'd recommend buying for 62p from one of the used book sellers on Marketplace though as this book is probably worth £4-£5 at most, I can't recall what we paid for it, but I would eat my hat if we paid more than £5 around 14 months ago.

Overall:

Overall my child and I really enjoy this story, it's fun to read and be read to, the illustrations are grand and the story flows with humour and rhyme. My only criticism is that the wording is fairly difficult to read with a dim light due to the dark nature of the blue filled pages, but that is perhaps more a statement about the lighting in my home than the book. This isn't the best of Donaldson by any way but it is fun and still probably about 14th or 15th choice on our shelves.