Find the Fish

Children's Literature

Eels are long and thin like snakes; they like to hide between rocks. A ray hides at the bottom of the ocean, under the sand. Puffer fish have spots that help them blend in with the rocks. While a scorpion fish changes its color to blend in with different colored rocks. Early readers will learn about fish in this title, part of the "Hide and Seek" series. Although the content of the book is a great idea for pre-school-age children, the layout and design needed more editing. The book presents a table of contents; however, the headings from the table of contents are not included on the pages. This makes it a bit hard for young readers to know when a change of subjects has occurred in the text. When looking at the table of contents, it appears that the "About the Author" will be a large section: in reality, it is a tiny blurb in very small print at the bottom of the last page of the book. The text is an interesting idea, and the book does give early readers a glimpse into the features of nonfiction texts with a glossary, an index, new words, and a page with websites. However, a bit more editing is needed to make this a successful choice for early readers. 2000, Rosen, Ages 3 to 5.
—Mindy Hardwick