Gone Fishin' ~ a bucket of fishy tales

 by Sue Heavenrich

A couple months ago, Kathy Halsey interviewed Pam Courtney about her new book, A Season For Fishin’: A Fish Fry Tradition. And that got me thinking of all the fish stories my uncles and cousins used to tell – about the ones they caught, the ones that were “this big” (imagine arms spread as wide as they can go), and mostly about the ones that got away. And THAT got me wondering … 

how many ways could we tell a fish story?

We could stick with the facts, like Debra Kempf Shumaker does in her book, Freaky, Funky Fish: Odd Facts about Fascinating Fish. To be a fish, she writes, you have to have certain characteristics: scales, gills, maybe fins. But not all fish are alike. Debra shows, in rhyming text, the different ways fish are adapted to survive in their world. Some fish zap, some sing, some produce copious amounts of slime – and one even has a see-through head! What I love about this book is how she rates each fish on a funkiness scale of 1-5. 

We could profile a specific fish, like Elaine M. Alexander does in Anglerfish: The Seadevil of the Deep. The anglerfish looks like a very scary monster, what with that big mouth and sharp teeth. But she wasn’t always so big, or so toothy. In this book, we follow the anglerfish from fry to fierce predator to releasing eggs for the next generation. What I particularly like about this book is how the dark, mysterious illustrations bring us right into anglerfish’s deep, dark world.. I also like the comparison of the different species of angler fish. I didn’t know there were so many!

We could tell stories about the people who study fish. Like the students in Emmy’s class that Mary Boone follows in School of Fish. They watch salmon eggs from the day they’re dropped into the fish tank to the day they release the fry into a river. Along the way, the students learn about more than fish; they learn about ecosystem connections. And they learn how to work together for the good of the fish.

Or like fish scientists, such as Cristina Zenato, profiled in Sharks Unhooked, The Adventures of Cristina Zenato, Underwater Ranger, by Patricia Newman and Else Bostelmann, the underwater artist profiled in Else B. in the sea : the woman who painted the wonders of the deep, by Jeanne Walker Harvey. Not only are these fish stories, but they are about amazing women in science!

We could write about the important work fish do, like the cleaner fish in Susan Stockdale’s book, Don't Eat the Cleaners! Tiny Fish with a Big Job. When fish get dirty (like … how does that even happen? They live in water!) they head to a cleaning station. Cleaner wrasse and cleaner shrimp hang out there, ready to nibble dead skin and parasites of their fishy customers. These cleaner fish also slip between sharp teeth, pulling out bits of food, and nibble algae from sea turtle shells.

Or how tiny fish no longer than your finger are helping to save an important biome, in Sy Montgomery’s Amazon adventure : how tiny fish are saving the world's largest rainforest. They save not only the rainforest but the culture and economy that depend on them.

And of course, we could tell stories in the tradition of  an authentic “fish story” – absurd tall tales that get taller with each telling. Here are two that had me chuckling:

Don’t Trust Fish, by Neil Sharpson which begins with some matter of fact explanations of how to tell a mammal from a bird but quickly goes off the rails when it comes to fish. Why? Because you can’t trust fish! They spend all their time in the water, some are as big as a bus, and what are they teaching in those “schools” anyways?

I Need Pants! by Susan Sweet in which Fish desperately wants a pair of pants. Octopus points out that Fish can’t wear pants because fish don’t have legs. But once Fish finds a pair of pants and struts around the ocean in style, Octopus decides to try a few pairs on for size … 

So grab your tackle box – or your pencil and notebook, paints and sketchpad – and head to the river. What sort of Fish Story will you come back with?