GOLDFISH GHOST by Lemony Snicket

Snicket, L. Goldfish Ghost. Illus. by Lisa Brown. New York: Roaring Brook, 2017. Print. 

From the very first time I read this book, I was almost completely mystified by it. A ghost fish? This concept had me asking a lot of questions. But I really enjoy books like this that make me think,  so I have been rereading it throughout the spring and now early summer in an attempt to get a handle on it. (I didn't get a final copy until the end of the school year, so I haven't shared it with young readers as of yet.)

Goldfish Ghost lives in Boy's room in his bowl, but he's been there for awhile, and he's getting lonely. So he floats out the window in search of a friend, taking the reader on a tour of a a quaint little tourist-y town by the sea. And though the town is filled with summer beach-goers, Goldfish Ghost still finds himself friendless. He passes by some other ghosts in the water, but goes right on by, deeming them "not good company". With his search for friends unsuccessful, he returns to his bowl. When he arrives, he finds the bowl already has a new occupant. Though she was "nice enough", the new fish isn't quite what Goldfish Ghost is looking for, so he floats out the window again. Does Goldfish Ghost eventually find a good friend? Does he give up trying? In his latest work (a picture book), Lemony Snicket explores friendship and how we are always looking for people with whom we'd like to connect--- whether we share common interests, ideas, or backgrounds or not.

What keeps bringing me back to this story is the artwork -- illustrations with much worth noticing. Employing every hue of blue I love (sea blue, night blue, teal, and powder blue), Brown's watercolor images are both mysterious and delightful. Goldfish is round and curved, so the visual is comforting. The art bleeds into every page corner (no frames here), and so Goldfish Ghost's world is ours as well for all 40 pages. The two-page spread at the beach gives the reader a perfect vantage point: we ourselves are beachgoers, too, and we are people-watching: the couple enjoying ice cream cones with their daughter, the boy walking out of the pet store with a goldfish himself (Could this be a clue?), the family headed down to the water with a canoe on the roof of their car, etc, etc.

The flying seagulls peering down in one spread on the right corner as well as the left, with text smartly placed on one wing.

Endpapers imply before and after, morning and night, beginning and end, providing context.

The passage of time is expressed in dimming blue and setting sun, making the reader feel empathy for a fish who has waiting all day long for companionship. (See the double page spread where Goldfish Ghost waits patiently, atop a beach umbrella.)

And the book titles! In the Boy's room, children's literature fans will see fish-themed books they know and love, one of them being, of course, Swimmy by Leo Lionni. An ode to other picture books before it.

This book is much like Lemony Snicket: we cannot quite figure him out (and maybe this is as it should be!), but that is what brings us back to his books again and again.