Don’t Trust Fish

By Neil Sharpson & Dan Santat

Reviewed by Mia Macrossan

This is Neil Sharpson debut picture book. He has written adult novels and writes Unshaved Mouse, a comedic review blog mostly focusing on animated film and comic book movies. His team mate Dan Santat is the creator of The Adventures of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend, which won the 2015 Caldecott Medal for distinguished illustration and many many other picture books.

Together they have created a hilarious nature guide gone wrong that makes you look at fish in a completely different way. As it says on the back cover ‘ There are plenty of fish in the sea. Don’t trust any of them’.

The story starts with standard formal text and illustrations of familiar animals – a cow (mammal), a snake (reptile), and a bird ‘Anything with feathers is a bird. Birds are dead easy.‘.This change from neutral description to chatty comment signals a divagation, an eloquent, sometimes manic, new way of looking at fish. ‘Fish don’t follow any rules…They are rebels and outlaws….A group of fish is called a “school.” But what are they learning in these “schools”?’ 

Page after hilarious page we see why we should never trust fish. At the end the writer apologises ‘I got a little carried away there’ and goes back to neutral animal descriptions and you are left wondering who actually wrote all that impassioned stuff about never trusting fish. The clever and witty illustrations which range from meticulous exact representations to goofy over the top scenes do give you a clue as to the identity of the narrator who may have hijacked the text.

The reader does learn a lot about fish so it is a nature guide in a way but it is also a lesson in who to trust. Readers of any age will enjoy exploring this new approach to scientific decription and have a lot of fun along the way.

Penguin 2025

Neil Sharpson

Dan Santat