A Fish Tale: Or, The Little One That Got Away

by Leo Yerxa

Small Fry, a little fish, meets a bigger fish who tempts him to swallow a hook, and Small Fry barely escapes with his life.

Genres: Indigenous

32 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Leo Yerxa was an award-winning Ojibwa writer, illustrator and artist. He was born in 1947 on the Little Eagle Reserve in northwestern Ontario, and studied graphic arts at Algonquin College in Ottawa and fine arts at the University of Waterloo. He wrote Last Leaf, First Snowflake to Fall, which won the 1994 Mr. Christie's Book Award. He received the Governor General's award for illustration in 1996 for his exceptional book Ancient Thunder. In addition to the three picture-books he both wrote and illustrated, he also illustrated a number of other books. Yerxa died in 2017.

Reviews

[Abigail · Rating 4 out of 5]

Small Fry was a little fish with big thoughts. Not much good at darting school, he spent most of his time wondering whether the stories the old fuddie-duddies told about a different dimension above the water was true. One day, happening upon a grinning fish named Jack, he was lured to the surface of the lake where he lived, hooked by a fisherman, and then thrown back in the water because he was too small. Before he returned to his watery home however, he caught a glimpse of the upper world he'd long wondered about, returning home a wiser fish...

I read and enjoyed Ojibwe author and artist Leo Yerxa's two other picture-books, Ancient Thunder and Last Leaf First Snowflake to Fall , a number of years ago, but was never able to track down A Fish Tale: Or, The Little One That Got Away. Fortunately, it was recently made available on The Internet Archive, and I was finally able to read it. What an interesting book it is! The text itself is beautifully written, and frequently poetic, while the story is quite philosophical, suggesting the idea of other dimensions existing around us. This sounds mystical, and in a sense it is, but it is also realistic. After all, to a fish raised in the water, the world above must indeed seem a different dimension. Although text-heavy for a picture-book, I enjoyed the narrative here a great deal, and I also enjoyed the beautiful watercolor and stenciled pastel illustrations, which alternated between deep blue and white backgrounds, and featured lovely piscine figures. This would make a wonderful book to read with older picture-book audiences, and could lead to some interesting discussions about perspective, and how we approach the world(s) around us.