Meet April, the red goldfish, with an enquiring mind, a deeply philosophical outlook and seriously existentialist views.
Not your ‘usual’ red goldfish by any means. (Not that there’s anything usual about a red goldfish in the first place!)
From the author of Little Red Hood, comes this humorous, bizarre and soul searching story.
April dreams of ‘what might be’, ‘what could be’ and lives to understand the meaning of life, always pushing the boundaries of her glass bowl.
“She dreamed of escape. She wanted to travel… and meet other fish.”
This tiny but tenacious character doesn’t ‘do’ defeated. She has a plan and wholly intends to follow it through.
Leray’s sophisticated scribbles are packed with punches of humour and clever witticisms throughout and whilst the loopy lettering can be a little tricky to decipher at times, it is beautiful to look at and accompanies the style of illustrations perfectly.
An undercurrent of dark humour bubbles away throughout this book and it even tackles a failed suicide attempt early on in the story.
Whilst some have said this is not appropriate for the emerging reader, we would beg to differ.
The wide-eyed and scaly-tailed April, is a force to be reckoned with. An evidently strong character, with aspirations way beyond the confines of her glass goldfish bowl, but that doesn’t stop her and we love her never ceasing tenacity.
In fact, we’d like to see more characters like this in our picture books.
Another strong offering from Leray, beautifully translated by Sarah Ardizzone.
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