The Boy Who Wanted to be a Fish: 10/20/07

The Boy Who Wanted to be A Fish is one of my favorite children's stories from when I was a small child. It was my mother's favorite too as a child and she read it to me from her copy. Later when my brother was little I read it to him. Anyway, the story came up in a conversation with Sean and he was so taken in with my description of it that I had to get a copy for our library. It's times like this that I adore the internet.

Amby is having his birthday and his mother tells him he can have anything he wants. In true little kid logic, he says he wants to be a fish. His mother not able to give him that wish, pawns the now grumpy Amby off on his big sister, telling her to take him to the drug store to get two ice cream cones. When Amby refuses to go because fish don't walk, they swim, big sister dumps him into a wagon and pulls Amby along to the drug store.

Along the way the siblings meet up with a number of grown ups all saying sensible things about how Amby can't possibly be a fish and so forth. All their well meaning just makes the birthday boy angrier and more determined to become a fish on his birthday. Ultimately though, Mr. Buzzle the druggist has the perfect solution to Amby's wish.

I don't want to give away the ending in case you happen to find a copy. There are a couple on Amazon and a few more on Alibris. It is well worth the effort to get a copy. I can say that both Sean and Harriet loved the book.

For Sean it was the perfect book for the silly story and for the color scheme in the illustration. See, Sean's favorite color is pink and currently the color pink has been so horribly co-opted by marketers wanting to sell things to girls or to the breast cancer awareness cause that it's nearly impossible for anyone to imagine that a boy might actually like the color! The Boy Who Wanted to be a Fish is an old enough book that it has the older gender color scheme of pink for boys (note Amby's pink shirt and latter his birthday cake is also pink; and his sister's blue hat, ribbons and socks).

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