OK, this book just cracked me up! A man wakes up as a fish! He has a dream in which steak, sausages, pork chops and meatballs chase him down, and beat him with bats! He rides the subway (as a fish!), and ends up living happily in a fishbowl! It's an interpretive bonanza here folks - one that should appeal to everyone from the vegetarian/vegan crew to the psychoanalytic crowd (when is a steak just a steak?). It's only a matter of time before he wakes up, ala the opening of the book, in piscine form. Louis' growing unhappiness begins to manifest itself in both his waking and sleeping life, as he begins to imagine that his customers are fish, and dreams that assorted meat products are chasing him down and beating him. A salmon.' This Kafkaesque opening is quickly followed by a flashback to Louis' youth, offering an explanation of how a man who hated meat (but loved fish) became a butcher (answer: family tradition). 'One day last spring,' begins this delightfully surreal picture-book from Arthur Yorinks and Richard Egielski - the author/illustrator team also responsible for the Caldecott Medal-winning Hey, Al - 'Louis, a butcher, turned into a fish. Until on night, in fitful sleep, after uneasy dreams, Louis is changed in a profound and startling way and begins a happy new life. Louis soon has to take over his parents' butcher shop. As a boy he tried anythign to escape-even a job after school cleaning fishtanks.īut that doesn't last long. His whole childhood, even his birthdays, revolved aournd meat. He hates meat!Īll his life he's been surrounded by meat. He's 'always friendly, always helpful, a wonderful guy.' But Louis is not happy. He has a nice shop on Flatbush, with steady customers. Egielski!' Now Louis the Fish, their second picture book, not only fulfills the promise of the first, but amply surpasses it.

The magic rests in teh seamless bond of Arthur Yorinks's and Richard Egielski's deft and exciting collaboration.' Sendak concluded his review with an enthusiastic 'Welcom, Mr. Maurice Sendak greeted the publication of the first book by this unique author-and-artist team with an astonishing review in The New York Times Book Review, which began: ' Sid and Sol is a wonder-a picture book that heralds a hopeful, healthy flicker of life in what is becoming a creatively exhausted genre.

Arthur yorinks books