The Fish of Small Wishes
by Elana K. Arnold; illus. by Magdalena Mora
Primary    Roaring Brook    40 pp.
1/24    9781250765321    $18.99
e-book ed.  9781250366689    $11.99

Kiki Karpovich feels too shy to join in playing with the other kids on her vibrant, racially diverse city street. One day she looks down at the sidewalk and notices something odd: “The asphalt glistened like water in the heat. Kiki saw something…moving…a giant fish!…‘Help,’ it seemed to say.” She rushes the creature inside, puts it in the bathtub, and fills up the tub, thus saving its life. When the grateful fish, surprisingly, offers up a wish, Kiki asks to be granted lots of friends. This request is too big for our “fish of small wishes,” so Kiki goes away to think. “I wish I weren’t so shy,” she says to the (now larger) fish, but this is also beyond its scope. The next day she has a new idea, including a way to help the fish, but again: no deal. Finally, in contemplating their interactions, she’s able to fulfill her own wishes and assist her fishy friend. Color-splashed and varied mixed-media illustrations ably and playfully reflect both the story’s fantastical and down-to-earth elements. An appended note describes Arnold’s inspiration: a story her grandmother told about her own kindhearted grandfather’s fish rescue. (“No gefilte fish for Passover” that year.)

From the May/June 2024 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.