One Boy's Choice

July 27, 2020
Lush paintings by German illustrator Siems bring the Amazon up close in this tale by Brazilian-born Menezes (Nino’s Magical Night). Headed for a fishing trip with his grandfather, a brown-skinned boy in a pair of shorts wants desperately to catch a big fish and impress his disdainful peers: “I’ll show you,” he tells them. Siems views the pair’s departure from above, including two sleepy parrots in sharp focus. Waiting to catch something takes hours, during which the grandfather offers tales of fish living beneath water lilies, underscoring his familiarity with the river’s wildlife (“Perhaps they’re trying to tell us something important,” he says when fish jump out of the water). A huge specimen appears at last, but it’s an arowana, a species they can’t take: “You see the little fish in his mouth?” the grandfather explains, “They are his children.” If the two keep the fish, the babies will die, too. The boy is quick to see that saving the fish is more important than burnishing his reputation. Menezes’s words and Siems’s portraits of the Amazon’s miraculous profusion of life (at one point, without remark, grandfather and grandchild are surrounded by yellow butterflies) make readers long to know more. Ages 3–7.