Jangles: A Big Fish Story

The heroes of most picture books are furry and adorable. Not Shannon's (Too Many Toys!) trout Jangles, who lunges out of a spread with his gold eye gleaming, fins tense, underslung jaw studded with dozens and dozens of fishing lures and hooks: "They clinked and clattered as he swam. That's why he was called Jangles." The unnamed narrator's father shares a story his father told him, a highly embellished tale about his father's boyhood, when Jangles was the fish everyone wanted to catch. The trout's wily ways were the stuff of myth: "e ate eagles from the trees that hung out over the lake and full-grown beavers that strayed too far from home" (a spray of feathers and a glimpse of trout tail can be seen in midair as an astonished beaver looks on). The boy in the story catches Jangles--he claims--but few will foresee what happens next, in a series of events that owe both to folklore and suburban legend. Picture-book art doesn't get much more rousing than this; for anglers in particular and adventure lovers in general, it's a slam-dunk. Ages 4-up. (Oct.)

Gr 2-4--Shannon reinvents the "big fish story" with this creepy tall tale, framed as a story the narrator's father told him about "the biggest fish anyone had ever seen." "Jangles was so big he ate eagles...," but not kids. One day, as a child, he drifted out and reeled in Jangles, who pulled him to the bottom of the lake and told him stories. When they came to the surface, he snared the giant fish with his line. Jangles upbraided him for his ungratefulness, and the boy released him, removing the lures as penance. The story ends with an image of the tackle box full of them. The illustrations are full-bleed spreads in dark shades of green, brown, and blue. Jangles is so huge that he runs off the pages, and his lures-covered underbite and mean yellow eye are distinctly scary. Shannon's people have the rounded faces and bulging eyes found in The Rain Came Down (Scholastic, 2000), and are reminiscent of the creepy computer animated baby that went viral in the 1990s. The story is predictable, short on plot, and heavy on exclamation points. The narrator's sudden ability to breathe underwater is more jarring than Jangles's ability to talk, and the fish's capture feels mean-spirited, leading to a didactic ending.--Amy Lilien-Harper, The Ferguson Library, Stamford, CT