Fish Wish is a delightful fantasy story about a boy who thinks about being a fish while playing at the beach. The book is only 20 pages long, and it has engaging illustrations--just right for a good read-aloud. The book comes with a website address where you can download an audio recording of the story to listen to. Your child can listen to this wonderful story on the computer, or you can burn it onto a CD and play it at bedtime.

While the tale is enchanting, the rhyming in the story is a bit different from other books. The couplings are split into threes instead of twos or fours and may throw the reader off. When a page is turned in mid-rhyme it sounds unfinished and mixes up the tempo of the book. The offbeat tone seems to right itself in certain areas though, so this is nothing to be alarmed about. At times, the odd phrasing puts the words on different pages from the illustrations, so the reader has to wait and turn the page to see what the author is writing about.

Even though the title of this story is Fish Wish, the first page with a picture of a fish can confuse the reader. You don't have any idea (until the end of the story) that the person talking is a boy dreaming about life under the sea. I didn't find that type of surprise appealing. It left me very confused and lost as I read the story. However, this book does make a wonderful bedtime story. My children enjoyed the pictures of sea life.

This story was highly enjoyable for our family, and it does take the reader on a journey far under the sea. Once you get used to the odd phrasing and surprise ending, reading this book again and again will delight you and your children.

Product review by Lyria Moore, The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine, LLC, July 2009