Photo: Laszlo-photo

With J’s current fish obsession we’re on the look out for books about fish at the moment. One Smart Fish by Chris Wormell was a chance find when we were visiting the Natural History Museum a few weeks back – it’s not a book I had previously heard of – but it’s now definitely one of J’s favourites so far this year.

One Smart Fish tells the story of a crucial evolutionary step – how many millions of years ago some fish left the sea and began life on land. It’s a big topic but through the use of stunning illustrations and perfectly pitched text, liberally sprinkled with humour, Wormell has written the ideal book for introducing the idea of evolution to young children.

Many pages are densely packed with a range of fish of all shapes, sizes, colours and texture, whilst the penultimate double page spread has a hugely detailed expanse of creatures surging out across the land showing the evolution from fish to – eventually – human beings. Like the earlier pictures of fish we can’t help pouring over the illustrations and playing “I spy” – just like we do when reading some other much enjoyed books of ours – Anno’s Journey or The History Puzzle.

One Smart Fish doesn’t attempt to deal with the science or evidence for evolution but it does introduce the concept of evolution exceptionally well. Both M and J find it funny yet brilliant that they are evolved from fish – this idea has really caught their imagination and M in particular has wanted to find out more. That Wormell’s book has so engaged my two kids and got them asking lots of questions is a testament to its brilliance.

Inspired by the range of beautiful and colourful fish in Wormell’s book we set about creating our own ocean full of fish. First I cut out lots of fish shapes from clear plastic containers I’ve been saving (strawberry punnets, for example). The girls used permanent markers (sharpies) to colour in and decorate the fish.

Next they had a lot of fun cleaning out an old fish tank that had been languishing amongst my pots at the back of the garden.

To make the fish appear to be swimming in the tank we attached two threads to each fish. One thread had a bead or a button attached at one end – the girls had an absolutely wonderful time investigating which of their beads and buttons would sink – an activity we have done again since as they enjoyed it so much. The other thread was attached to a small strip of bubble wrap to give the impression of bubbles coming out of the fishes mouths when they were in the water.

The fish tank was filled with water and then we added some sand – this made the water look a little dirty, but the idea was to make it seem more like the ocean than a sterile fish tank.

A few shells and some other marine life (ocotopi and sea horses) were added to complete our land beneath the waves.

We all had a great deal of fun creating this seascape – if you are inspired to do something similar, we’d love to hear about it

One Smart Fish: *** (3 stars)

Some fishy music to create by:

For more songs with an evolutionary theme you could take a look at Songs about Darwin and Evolution from Cells in Culture or Evolution Songs: Celebrating Charles Darwin’s 200th Birthday from Gigwise.


And some more fish activities that might work well alongside this book:

Having read One Smart Fish – the text of which is simple enough for J, at 2, to enjoy and easily follow, I then read the more complex How Whales Walked Into the Sea by Faith McNulty, Ted Rand, and Ted Lewin with M. If you can get hold of it I would urge you do do so as I cannot imagine a better follow-up read to One Smart Fish – it deals with the evolutionary step taken by one branch of mammals that returned to the sea, eventually resulting in whales. I first came across this book thanks to a review over at In need of Chocolate, where you can find a great series of posts about books for kids on evolution and prehistory. If you wanted a book for adults that would go really well with One Smart Fish and How Whales Walked Into the Sea, At the water’s edge by Carl Zimmer comes highly recommended by my wonderful husband!

Now what about you? Do you have any favourite picture books about fish? Or about evolution?

Photo: Longhorndave

Billy’s Bucket by Kes Gray, illustrated by Garry Parsons is both a wonderful celebration of the power of imagination and a warning to parents who do not take their children’s creativity seriously!

All Billy wants for his birthday is a bucket. Not a bike or a computer game. Just a bucket. His parents try unsuccessfully to persuade Billy otherwise but eventually a trip to Buckets-R-Us takes place. Billy returns home utterly delighted. He fills his bucket with water and so begin hours of play.

Every time Billy peers into his bucket he sees different watery worlds – crabs, sharks, divers, perhaps even a mermaid play in the water, and Billy is mesmerised by it all. His parents, on the other hand, are dismissive. They start off by humouring Billy (“What’s in your bucket now, Billy?” giggled his mum. “Seven sea lions and a walrus,” said Billy. “Of course there are, Billy,” laughed his mum and dad.) but soon they can’t resist teasing him a little; they try to persuade Billy to lend them his bucket so that they can use it for some household chores. Billy refuses. He loves his bucket and the worlds it contains. Indeed he goes to bed that night very happy – his bucket is “the best present in the world.”

The following morning Billy comes down to the kitchen to find his bucket missing. Although distraught it is Billy who ends up having the last laugh – it turns out his Dad borrowed the bucket to wash the car…and, well, let’s just say Billy’s Dad is now left looking somewhat foolish for not believing in Billy and the power of his imagination.

Please try to find a copy of Billy’s Bucket – the story is a fantastic testament to the power of imagination and a gentle reminder to those of us who might at times be far too sensible to believe in a little bit of magic. Kids will love it that Billy was proved right – there were, after all, marvellous sea creatures in his bucket, and parents will share a wry smile of recognition at the behaviour of Billy’s Mum and Dad. I also love the story for its delight in a simple birthday gift – a bucket – not a Wii or a trip to Disneyland – and in this respect it reminds me of Katie Cleminson’s Box of Tricks (which I reviewed here). Another book which could work well along side Billy’s Bucket is Polly Dunbar’s Penguin (which I reviewed here). All three are lovely birthday-themed books which rejoice in a child’s ability to imagine and create personal narratives.

The illustrations in Billy’s Bucket are bold and bright – J particularly enjoyed them. And whilst I don’t think they have the artistic flair of Katie Cleminson’s or Polly Dunbar’s illustrations they are nevertheless great fun to look at and an important part of why this book can hold the attention of both M (5) and J (1) at the same time.

To go with Billy’s Bucket we made our own buckets filled with sea creatures – but these were no ordinary buckets – their contents became our pudding one evening….

We used:

M made the gelatin as per the instructions on the packet, and simply added some blue food colouring for the “water” to go in the “buckets”. Jelly/Jello might work just as well, if you can get it in a blue colour . Once prepared, M poured the blue gelatin into the buckets where we left it to set for about an hour – just enough time for the gelatin to start firming up, but not for it to become too firm.

M then used a fork to push the sealife sweets into the water. Because the gelatin was already partly set the sea creatures appeared to float in the water and not sink all the way to the bottom.

Once the buckets were full of sea water and sea creatures they were left in the fridge to fully set.

Am I really showing you a photo of the inside of my fridge?? This is not at all what I anticipated when I started blogging…

Here’s our final collection of buckets full of wriggly sea life:

Here are the girls enjoying their buckets after dinner!

Billy’s Bucket:*** (3 stars)

And here’s the music we’ve been enjoying alongside Billy’s Bucket:

And just to show that some of my music is a little bit more up to date than the trio above we’ve also been listening to Ocean Night Song by Laura Veirs!

Other crafty activities which could work well alongside Billy’s Bucket include: