Tiddler, The Story-Telling Fish: OH, YES, HE DID!

Tiddler. The Story-Telling Fish. Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler, 2007.
Alison Green Books, Scholastic Children's Books, 2010.



Click above to listen to the way we read Tiddler, The Story-Telling Fish. 

I have gradually come round to thinking this may be one of the best stories for reading aloud to under two-year-olds (and over) we have. It has a flowing, effortless rhythm, becoming almost a gentle rap when you read it out loud, plus plenty of repetition and opportunities to join in.

The story
Tiddler is a little fish that "blows small bubbles but tells tall tales". Every day he arrives late for fish school and every day his excuse is a taller tale, ranging from having been riding on a seahorse to having been trapped in a treasure chest and set free by a mermaid. At school nobody really believes him except impressionable Little Johnny Dory, who is so excited by his stories that he tells them to his granny, who in turn tells them to a plaice, and thus the stories are spread across the ocean. One day while dreaming up his next fantasy, he actually gets to live a real adventure of his own. Poor little Tiddler gets fished!

Fortunately, the fishermen throw him back because he is too small, but Tiddler is lost, frightened and does not know how to get back. But then he hears a rather familiar story about himself being chanted by a shoal of anchovies, and follows the story across the ocean from shrimp to whale to herring to eel to lobster to seal, back home and to his classroom, where, as always, nobody believes him except Little Johnny Dory, who does something rather special for Tiddler at the end.  

The Illustrations
Axel Scheffler's vivid and colourful pen, ink and pencil illustrations, full of detail and expressiveness, really come to life in Tiddler.

By the time we got Tiddler, my son was already acquainted with Scheffler's illustrations from The Gruffalo and Room on the Broom, so he took to these immediately. We really like all the different types of fish and all the sea life -Tiddler was responsible for my son's octopus and shark phase- and the fish school scenes are very good fun. And then of course, there is the gruffalo fish that pops up midway through the book. I think it was one of the first times I saw my son laugh for a reason other than tickling or hearing a funny noise.

Here are some illustrations from Tiddler:

Opening  double page spread, with Tiddler at the centre of the first page
and some of his excuses for arriving late portrayed on the second page

Mermaid rescuing Tiddler with a shark lurking about

Granny Dory telling Tiddler's story to her friend the plaice

Tiddler being captured by the net!

Reading it out loud

When we first got Tiddler, and the first couple of times I read it, I have to say I was not too sure about it. There was something about the story, in particular the ending, that seemed to fall flat. But the more we read it out loud, the more we got into the flowing rhythm and the more our son enjoyed it. It has a wonderful musicality and a few nice repetitive structures for small listeners to join in. It quickly became one of our favourites.

Tiddler was our son's first goodnight story. We always read other bedtime stories before, on the sofa, but Tiddler was the first story we took into his own bedroom to read to him just before he dropped off to sleep.

One of the interesting things about reading it out loud is the different effects it can have depending on the speed at which you read it. Because it was our son's goodnight story every single night for a good few months, we realised that when he was very tired we were reading it to him very quickly, almost rapping it. Perfect for a sleepy boy. But then other times, for more alert moods, we read it more slowly and allow time for stopping, looking, pointing and joining in. The recording is probably somewhere in between:



Our son joins in every time Miss Skate calls the register at fish school:
"Tiddler? Tiddler? TIDDLER'S LATE!":


And in every "Oh no, s/he didn't", "OH, YES, S/HE DID"!


Other comments
Since the Tiddler months, we have had briefer bedtime flirts with Eric Carle's The Very Quiet Cricket, Donaldson and Scheffler's The Snail and the Whale, and Sam McBratney and Anita Jeram's Guess How Much I Love You, a very long love story with Maurice Sendak's The Nutshell Library every single night for months and, a recent move, on to The Boy in the Garden by Allen Say, but I'm sure he'll return to Tiddler at some point.


Tiddler is "The boy who cried wolf" (in fact it was even released in some places as The fish who cried wolf) with the moral refreshingly left out.

I'm still not sure about the ending, though.

(c) of all illustrations in this post, Axel Scheffler, 2007.

A Taste of the Moon. To us, it tastes of cheese and broccoli

A Taste of the Moon by Michael Grejniec. Kalandraka, 2010. 

Original title in German: Wie schmeckt der Mond?, Bohem Press, 1993.

Our edition: ¿A qué sabe la luna? (Kalandraka Editora, 1999), translated by Carmen Barreiro. 

Click on the image to listen to the way we read A Taste of the Moon (in Spanish).

(This review refers to the Spanish edition)

A Taste of the Moon is a fable about co-operation, the advantages of being insignificant in size and appearance, and perspective, with a dash of humour provided by a playful moon. We like it!

The story

The animals had long wanted to find out what the moon tasted like. The would look up at the sky wistfully, stretching out as far as they could, but none of them could reach it. 

One day the tortoise decided to climb the tallest mountain, determined to reach the moon. Up there, the moon was indeed closer, but still a little too far to reach. So the tortoise called the elephant, who climbed up on top of the tortoise to see whether they could touch it. The moon took it as a game and decided to move away a little, and the elephant could not reach either. So they started calling all the other animals, one by one, until forming an unlikely tower with the tortoise at the base, followed by the elephant, the giraffe, the zebra, the lion, the fox, the monkey... and each time the moon saw another animal arrive, it moved away just a little bit more to stop them from reaching.


Finally, the monkey, who was so close he could smell the moon, called the mouse. When the moon saw the mouse she said to herself 'Such a small animal will never reach me'. And she stayed where she was. So the mouse climbed up the tower of animals and -at last!- managed to tear off a small piece of the moon. It then passed down a piece of the moon to each of the other animals below. And what did it taste of? It tasted of what each of them liked best. After their formidable feat, the animals huddled together and went to sleep.  

The fable ends with a fish looking at the moon in the water, flip-turning our perspective in the form more of an epilogue than a moral. 

The illustrations

The illustrations made with watercolour on papier maché create a fantastic illusion of three dimensions and  a texture that seems almost edible. 

We really like both the scenes of the animals and the moon against the black background of night and the illustrations of the animals arriving on the white background of the text page. 

These are the rather charming characters of A Taste of the Moon:

The tortoise, who bears the weight,
not of the world like in the Hindu myth,
but of a rather impressive tower.

The elephant

The giraffe

The zebra

The lion. We love this lion!

The fox

The monkey

And our great little hero, the mouse. 

Here are the base of the tower and the finished tower: 

  

And, at last, the bite:

Reading it out loud: 

Like with many traditional tales and stories, A Taste of the Moon has a repetitive, cumulative structure that is perfect for captivating small ears.  

We always call out for each animal to come: 'Elephaaant! Elephaaant!', Giraaaaaffe! Giraaaaffe' which encourages our son to take part in the narration. He loves calling out for them all!

When, at long last, the animals are savouring the pieces of moon, tasting of whatever they like best, we explain to our son that for him the moon would taste of cheese and broccoli, which are the two things that he never, ever, ever turns down.

There are also a couple of things we change that apply only to the Spanish version which I don't see the point of going into here. (If interested and you read Spanish, you can read it here.)

Other things we like about it

One thing I particularly like about A Taste of the Moon is that instead of ending with a facile moral, it closes with a nice question about how perspective affects our view of the world and the way we interact with it.

I think this one is going to be a book with a long shelf life.  

(c) of all illustrations in this post, Michael Grejniec, 1993. 

The Little Red Fish: Whisper, whisper

The Little Red Fish by Taeeun Yoo.
Dial Books for Young Readers, Penguin, 2007.

Click on the cover to listen to the way we read The Little Red Fish. 


The Little Red Fish is a wonderfully quiet, mesmerising book, perfect for whispering out loud. Perhaps the fact that it takes place in a library, but mainly something about the dark but warm etching and hand colour illustrations, seem to make you lower your voice unconsciously when reading it out loud.

The Story
For the first time in his life, little JeJe is allowed to go to the library in the middle of the forest with his grandfather, the librarian. JeJe takes along his little red fish in its bowl to share the experience.

Amazed and excited by all those rooms lined with books, JeJe starts to explore the library from one corner to another, peeking into each room before entering. Soon he gets tired and falls asleep, to wake up in a dark and quiet room, feeling 'as though he had been swallowed up by the darkness'.

Scared and lonely, he starts reading a book to his little red fish by the light of the moon. But when he looks up, the fish bowl is empty! In his search for his little red fish, full of mystery and fear of the dark, JeJe keeps catching glimpses of its tail disappearing out of sight until he finally sees the fish disappearing into a book. JeJe picks it up and opens it and, whoosh!, the magic starts:

A sea of red fish, all the same as his, floods the library, Jeje reaches down and falls down, down into the book, where he flies over the sea with a flock of flamingos, firmly holding on to the leg of one of them, and continues to fly and drift over dreamy textless scenes before diving into the sea, rescuing his red friend and coming out of the book, safe and dry.

About to go back home, JeJe whispers to his fish that they'll be back very, very soon.  

The Illustrations
The Little Red Fish by Taeeun Yoo was the author's graduate thesis for her master's degree at the School of Visual Arts. It combines that contagious joy, ambition and excitement of first works with extraordinarily accomplished talent and natural skill at telling a story through illustrations. It is a book that would work even without the text.

I like the fact that apart from the illustrations of the actual story, the illustrations on the endpapers are also significant. The endpapers at the front and at the back are identical -an illustration of shelves full of books and interesting bits and bobs like a clock with no hands, a stuffed owl, a vase- except for the one book that is red in the back endpaper but not in the front one.

I also like the warmth provided by the red, the only actual colour used in the entire book, and the shadows of the little fish in some of the illustrations.

Another interesting thing about the illustrations, as shown in the first image below, is the use of multiple representation in a single scene, cleverly providing a sense of movement. Wonderful. 

Here are a few wonderful illustrations from The Little Red Fish (there are not that many available online, so some of our favourite ones -JeJe and his grandfather riding to the library on a bicycle with the fish bowl on the rear seat and the library in the distance along the path, for instance- are missing):

Here is JeJe exploring the library with his grandfather in the room at the back and the little fish in his bowl by his side:

Whoosh! The red fish flooding the library:

Flying with flamingos:

Back endpaper, with a rather alive looking stuffed owl, the vase, the handless clock, the ladder leaning against the shelves, and the lamp lighting up the red book:

Reading it out loud
The fact that the story and illustrations are whisper-inducing make it an excellent bedtime or quietening down story. I even sometimes whisper the story in my son's ear which he loves and finds rather amusing.

But amidst all the whispering there is also the big 'Wow!' when the fish pour out of the book and the 'Here! Here!' every time a disappearing tail is spotted.

My son always points to a particular fish in the flood scene, absolutely persuaded that it is JeJe's. 'Not this one?', we ask, pointing to any other. 'No', he'll say, with a self-assurance that suggests he sees something the rest of us miss, 'this one'.

I often read in a couple more 'downs' when he falls into the book and another 'very' at the end: 'very very soon'.

For the pages without text, I sometimes narrate what's happening, but other times just let my son look at whatever he fancies.(In the recording, because it sounded a bit odd to remain silent, I've included the kind of thing I say when I'm reading it, although this changes each time I read it):


Bits and bobs: 
This is the first book I bought for my son, so it is rather special for us. I must have been about 12 weeks pregnant and I bought it at Boston Airport on my way back from my brother's wedding. I'm so glad I did!

About a year ago, I discovered that the author, Taeeun Yoo, has a shop where she sells some of her illustrations and prints: http://www.etsy.com/shop/yoote.

Browsing through her prints, I saw she had a couple of illustrations that were part of her study piece for The Little Red Fish. So we now have on our son's bedroom wall this great illustration that was never included in the final book:

Rather special indeed, if you ask me!

(C) Copyright of all illustrations in this post, Taeeun Yoo, 2007