Cheer up blobfish by Julie Murphy

It is festival time and all the sea creatures are coming together for the Festival of Fish. The perch are hiding in the seaweed, while the sturgeons sing and the wrasse heap up sand to make a sculpture. Every fish is joining in, laughing and playing. But blobfish is looking very unhappy. The fish crowd around wondering how they can cheer him up. The clown fish pushes to the front, eager to please. Then swordfish plays some magic tricks, the crowd is enthusiastic, but not the blobfish. Each fish has a try at turning the blobfish’s gloomy face around, but in the end they all give up and swim back to their festival. As night falls the blobfish swims back to his place deeper down and as he does he changes shape. His downturned lips turn into a smile as he recounts the day he has had to his parents. It was the best day ever, and he enjoyed himself immensely. How surprised the other fish would be if they could see him now. Just because he has a downturned smile, does not mean that he is unhappy. He is different from the others.

The moral of the story is about being judgemental. We should not judge people by the way they look or the person they present. The story encourages young readers to see beyond what is presented to them.

Bright, colourful illustrations of a variety of fish cover each page. Children will take flight in recognising the fish shown and add up all the information given about blobfish. Two pages at the end of the book give images of a blobfish alongside a page of information about these animals.

The front cover invites readers to look more closely with its optical representation of the blobfish, and the end papers will draw lots of interest and recognition.

Written by a zoologist and based on the characteristics of the real blobfish, the story aims to show that every individual is just that: different, and we should not judge a book by its cover.

Themes: First impressions, Animals, Sea creatures, Judgement.

Fran Knight