A friend for George by Gabriel Evans

George lives by the sea, but feels lonely. He wishes for someone to talk to, to share things with, someone to laugh with - he wants a  friend. One day he finds a rockpool and there he spies a fish with bright green fins and golden scales. He talks to the fish and before he knows it he is lying on his back in the sun telling the fish everything. He calls the fish Claude, because that’s what friends do. And proposes to meet him the next day. But when he goes to see his friend, the rock pool is no longer there, the tide has come in. He runs to the shed and gets out his boat and rows out into the sea, although he is a little wary, but this is what friends do, so he keeps at it. Eventually he finds Claude and sweeps him up into his goldfish bowl. So the pair floated over the seas, George telling Claude all the things he wanted to tell his friend as they watch the other creatures. But Claude does not seem all that happy. George realises that he has been preoccupied with what he wanted, and not the needs of his friend, and returns Claude to the sea.

With copious amounts of blue paint, Evans has created a wonderful sea vista for all readers to lose themselves in. Readers will be entranced with the range of sea creatures shown, and love the contrasting end papers with lonely George walking the shore line at the start to the array of sea creatures at the end, George happily diving amongst his new friends. The repetition of the line ‘because that’s what friends do’ is beautifully included along the way, rounding off the story as George rows back home, followed by some of the fish, checking on his safety, ‘because that’s what friends do.’

Readers will quickly learn that friendship does not mean keeping that person in a goldfish bowl, hogging their company at the expense of others, that friendship means closeness as well as space, times together and times apart.

Themes: Loneliness, Friendship, Sea, Sea creatures, Fish, Humour.

Fran Knight