Review of the Day: Don’t Trust Fish by Neil Sharpson, ill. Dan Santat

What makes a good unreliable narrator… in a picture book? One might argue that it’s very much the same qualities that make a good unreliable narrator in a work of fiction for older readers. There’s the choice the author must make as to whether or not to show their hand early or leave the reveal right up until the end. Then there are all the little details that appeared earlier in the book, leaving the reader to doubt everything they were told. That may sound a little heavy for a title whose intended audience is probably still a little unclear on the whole tying-your-shoes deal, but believe me when I say that when it comes to a book like Don’t Trust Fish, I feel inclined to pull out all my literary criticism tips and tricks. There are some picture books that you read that make you chuckle when you see the cover. There are some picture books where they might get one legitimate laugh out of the adult reader. There are some picture books that are funny to young readers. Now consider a book that makes everybody, and I do mean everybody, laugh from the cover onwards. THAT, my friends, is a picture book worth celebrating! That is a rarity! That… is I Don’t Trust Fish.
There are animals in this world that you can rely on. It has fur, is warm-blooded, and feeds its babies milk? That’s a mammal. Cold-blooded with scaly skin and lays eggs? Reptile. Feathers? Birds. Easy peasy. Then… there are fish. Fish don’t follow the usual rules, so you know what that means? “Don’t trust fish!” Don’t trust ‘em! Thanks to this book, you will learn the myriad reasons not to trust these sneaky denizens of the deep. Whale sharks? They’re the size of buses. “That is not okay”. Fish watch us. They plan. They scheme. With scintillating details and delightful art, young readers are given ample reasons not to trust our underwater brethren. But who, precisely, is imparting this information?
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I don’t want to spoil anything for anyone, but Neil Sharpson? He ain’t from around these here parts. Which is to say, the man is Irish. An Irish picture book author right here on our American shores, whatever will they think of next? Welp, he is, and one has to wonder if, upon reading this book, that fact would be apparent to anyone who came to this book cold. Maybe not, though there are a couple tells. Early on in the book you are informed that certain animals have common characteristics. To wit, we are right from the start presented with a cow. “This animal has fur. This animal is warm-blooded. This animal feeds her babies milk. This animal is a MAMMAL.” Now apart from being a wonderfully boring way to begin the book (all the better to offset the inevitable plunge into madness later) this sets up a set of expectations that kids may already be aware of. Filing animals into their phylum is what humans like to do. By the time you get to birds, a pattern has been set and Sharpson allows himself a wry, “Anything with feathers is a bird. Birds are dead easy.” There you go. That little soupçon of Irish. It’s not overt, but it’s there.
Now, while I run the risk of dissecting the frog, I want to just dive a little into why Don’t Trust Fish works as well as it does. Not since the incredible Mr. S by Monica Arnaldo have I encountered a picture book that is so universally and thoroughly enjoyed due to its hilarity. And why is that? Well, let’s talk a bit about what makes picture books funny. Maybe someday I’ll write a book on the subject since, for whatever reason, we don’t seem to have any books on them now. To write a successful funny picture book, you have two audiences you have to appease. You’ve got your adult gatekeepers, the ones who have the dollars in their pockets, and then you have the actual intended audience in the first place: children. Both children and adults, and I mean this truly, are terrible judges of what is funny. This is because kids and parents are not all that different. They both are easily led astray. There are many different ways to appeal to someone, and a book can certainly be funny the first time you read it… and then less and less funny after that. What keeps a book funny after multiple, maybe even hundreds, of reads? Comic timing. The art of the page turn. And the ability to make a book fun to read aloud over and over and over again.

First up, comic timing. This is directly connected to the art of the page turn, and I’d be unwilling to separate the two. Now I looked into this Neil Sharpson fellow. He’s blogged continually since 2012 (which I personally think should be medal-worthy right there) and he’s written many a fine book, but they ain’t children’s books or nuthin’. He does, however, have two children. This makes the odds that he’s read a picture book in the last several years good. But unlike, say, celebrities who read to their kids and then believe that they are now capable of putting words to paper (fun fact: they cannot) Sharpson appears to have learned something from these books he’s read. He understands how to make something funny and how to lead a reader astray. The best moment in this book, and I mean this truly, is the moment when we’ve already read the words “Don’t trust fish” repeated times and then we get to a white page with a single innocuous fish that looks like it couldn’t care less about where all this is going. The text reads, “This fish is okay. You can trust him.” Turn the page and together Sharpson and Santat have blown the two-page spread apart with words writ large in all their typographic splendor, reading, “NO! THAT WAS A TEST! DON’T TRUST FISH! ESPECIALLY NOT THIS ONE! THIS IS THE WORST FISH!” Please note that the fish has not changed one jot on this spread. Please also note that Dan Santat made the dot in one of the exclamation points a tiny skull. This is because Dan understands the assignment.
The assignment, in question, is to use the picture book format as a guide that will allow these two creators the freedom to try all kinds of different types of humor. There’s the illogical ramping up to extremes with the fish robots near the end (chaotic extremes are always one of my favorite types of picture book escalation). There are jokes that poke fun at ourselves (the dumb humans and their illogical love of pancakes). There’s the dichotomy of extremely realistic illustrations alongside funny cartoonish ones (more on Santat’s genius with this in a second). There’s the surprise ending. Bathroom humor (brief albeit effective). Someone talking like a pirate. I mean it, people. This has it all.

And it has it all because Dan Santat decided this was where he was going to plant this flag and work hard. Now, like any illustrator, Dan’s somewhat beholden to the text he’s handed. When he’s paired with an author, he has a certain amount of leeway as the illustrator to explore any number of venues. But Dan’s a funny guy. If the text allows him to play off of the humor already in the words, that’s great, but it’s even better if he can also build off of that and accentuate everything with this own distinctive brand of humor. You want to know how to make a successful picture book? You need a precise and simultneous balance of “funny” from both the author and the artist. AND they have to be compatible. AND the artist has to feel comfortable to try things. Things like drawing horrendously realistic animals at the beginning of the book before we even get to the fish. Things like in-jokes in the margins (please watch for any and all brand names that appear on the pages, particularly when sandwiches are being made). Things like sticking the landing with that final joke. Doggone it. Dan’s on fire with this.
I have a small problem. I am no longer a children’s librarian. As such, unless I co-opt one of my library’s storytimes like some crazed woman wielding her library degree like a weapon (commandeering Jammy Time much in the way Blackbeard would commandeer a unassuming vessel on the high seas) I am not likely to have a chance to read this book aloud to anyone anytime soon. I haven’t felt this frustrated at not being about to read a book to kids since I read Robo-Sauce by Adam Rubin and Daniel Salmieri. But that’s okay, because at least I can comfort myself with the knowledge that you, dear reader, may know a child. It might even be a child with a sense of humor. And if that child does not have a sense of humor, this book may have the power to change all that. This is going to be the picture book that brings us all together this year, so let’s celebrate that fact and, above all else, we must make one thing clear to one another. No matter what they tell you. No matter how they lie, plea, and beg… Don’t. Trust. Fish.
On shelves April 8th.
Filed under: Best Books, Best Books of 2025, Review 2025, Reviews

About Betsy Bird
Betsy Bird is currently the Collection Development Manager of the Evanston Public Library system and a former Materials Specialist for New York Public Library. She has served on Newbery, written for Horn Book, and has done other lovely little things that she'd love to tell you about but that she's sure you'd find more interesting to hear of in person. Her opinions are her own and do not reflect those of EPL, SLJ, or any of the other acronyms you might be able to name. Follow her on Twitter: @fuseeight.
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