As I read this 2025 picture book, I found myself wondering “Do these guys know how good they are?” And at one point, “Do these guys glow in the dark?”
That’s how good an example of a nonsensical picture book Don’t Trust Fish is. Neil Sharpson’s text starts like it is an educational text explaining types of animals: there are four lines about mammals, and a straightforward image by Dan Santat of a cow to illustrate the text. The next pages cover reptiles and birds, and they too largely play it straight, until the final line on birds: “Birds are dead easy.” These images are also straightforward illustrations, functional but forgettable.
And then they move to fish, and the whole thing explodes into wonderful folly. Factoids about fish are shared, but all to underscore the message that fish “are rebels and outlaws” and you shouldn’t trust them.
The action gets wilder and wilder, the claims about the inherent shiftiness of fish larger and more extreme, and the image expand to follow. Where early images had been limited, filling part of a page, later ones fill entire pages, using color dramatically top to bottom, and then move on to vivid two-page spreads.
I won’t spoil any of the specific reasons why you shouldn’t trust fish, but run (away from fish) don’t walk (that’s too slow to get away) to read this wonder.
