A fish and his under water friends! (Fidgety Fish and Friends - Paul Bright)

Member Name: Claribella

Product:	Fidgety Fish and Friends - Paul Bright
Date:	26/09/09 (37 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: The illustrations

Disadvantages: Paper pages

On our trip to the library this week I thought it would be good to pick up this one because we have been visiting our local aquarium a lot lately. The book is written by Paul Bright and illustrated by Ruth Galloway and it tells the story of lots of different underwater animals. When I say 'tells the story', there isn't a flow to it because each page features a different animal that you may find in the sea and dictates a rhyme a bout it.

The text is written in rhyme and tells of each individual creature including what they might do and what their character is like. It's so easy to read and I love the way that it sums up the creature in just four lines. Bright certainly has an art to poetry because everything he writes makes sense and there are no pointless words thrown in that really don't seem to make sense.

Although the text is great, it's the illustrations that carry the whole thing. They really are simple but effective. Each creature is very basic but recognizable and although the pages are detailed and covered in bright colours, they aren't too detailed that it all looks too much that it'll give you a headache.

Noah absolutely loves this book and knows what every single creature is. He enjoys chatting about each one and informing me that we see them on our visits to the aquarium. He really enjoys the pages where the words depict the sound of the motion that the fish is doing because he likes to copy too. He's picked up a lot of the words and enjoys reading it with me despite us only having had it for a few days.

I really enjoy reading this one and I almost didn't have to look at the words on the page because I knew what was coming. Some may find this predictable and boring but I really liked this because it meant that I didn't really have to think about what I was doing.

Despite this book being really simple, there is a lot to it and there is so much to talk about. I find that with a lot of children's book, I dread it when I see Noah walking across the room with it because I am so fed up with reading it. This isn't the case at all with this one because I don't feel that we've explored every aspect of it yet.

Although it would be a risky game to leave this book hanging around on the floor for my 12 month old son to look at(the pages are made of paper not board), I have read it with both him and Noah and he has also enjoyed it. He laughs at the fishes and seemed to be won over by the whole theme but this is largely due to the fact that on each page there is some glitter which is suppose to look like the water glistening. He loved feeling it because it was rough on his hands and I found that after a few pages he was able to find it and was already touching it before I had pointed it out or moved his hand into place.

This is going off track a little but I thought it was really strange to see that Galloway's name was above Paul Bright's. At first I assumed that Galloway had written it because her name came first but underneath her it said 'written by Paul Bright'. It threw me a little and have been wondering why. Maybe Bright is such a gentleman that he felt wrong putting his name first or maybe it's because the illustrations are far better than the story? Who knows?

I would highly recommend this book to anyone with a child aged two years and over. It would also be a really good tool for any teachers out there who are going to be doing an 'Under water' theme in the classroom. If you have a child who adores the under water world then this is definitely for them.

The book costs £5.99 from Waterstones and if you like this one then you might want to try other books in the same series like 'Smiley Shark' and 'Clumsy Crab'.

Summary: A great read