Plenty of Fish by Millicent Selsam

Plenty of Fish by Millicent Selsam. Illustrated by Erik Blegvad Out of Print
I Can Read Book
A Science I Can Read Book

Pages: 63
Ages: 7+
Finished: Mar. 15, 2011
First Published: 1960
Publisher: Harper & Row
Genre: children, easy reader, marine biology
Rating: 3.5/5

First sentence:

Here is Willy.

Acquired: Purchased a used copy at a book/library sale or thrift shop.

Reason for Reading: DS read aloud to me as his non-fiction reader.

This is a delightful easy reader, as are most of Millicent Selsam's "Science I Can Read Book"s which are sadly mostly out of print. This would be a wonderful one to bring back into print as the topic isn't out-dated at all. A little boy wants a goldfish, has saved up his money and asks his dad if he may buy one. So off he goes. From the moment he comes home with two goldfish in bags his father starts teaching him about fish, first they need a bowl and so forth. Willy is quite captivated by the way they breathe and does some experiments in the bathroom sink causing a watery mess but he just can't do it. He has to hold his breath. So Dad explains how fish breathe and later Willy is fortunate to find a fish for supper in the kitchen which he experiments on again to see the gills in action.

This book may also be one of the first to show a family consisting of a single father and son. No mention of the situation is made or what happened to the mom, either. They do have a woman in the house who is quite obviously the cook/maid. Blegvad's illustrations are wonderful. Simple tones of red and green but with minute details that are fun to catch looking through the book after the first read. It was just as ds was getting to the end of the book that he discovered that the pet cat was on every page, sometimes cleverly hidden. So we went back afterwards and found him on each page (well the inside the house scenes). I also started to notice things like one droopy sock, a picture of a woman in the dining room (is this mother?) and a dad who loves his boy so much that he throws his coat and hat in the chair to give him a big hug and doesn't care in the least that his hat landed on the floor. Delightful!