Breaking all the rules—in storytelling and in thinking!

In an age of infor­ma­tion overload—where opin­ions flood every cor­ner of our screens—what do you do when some­one insists, “What­ev­er you do, don’t trustX”, Do you believe them? Or not? Have you ever found your­self on the verge of trust­ingX or Y,only to be hit by a sud­den twist… then a twist on the twist… then a twist on the twist of the twist? So when you open a brand-new pic­ture book titled Don’t Trust Fish, the ques­tion prac­ti­cal­ly leaps off the cov­er: Should you trust it? Or not?

I had the chance to read a dig­i­tal pre­view of this book before its glob­al release, and inter­est­ing­ly enough, even before its offi­cial pub­li­ca­tion date—April 8, 2025 (exact­ly sev­en days after April Fools’ Day!)—the book has already made waves among ear­ly read­ers. Thanks to its sharp humor, unex­pect­ed rever­sals, and sheer orig­i­nal­i­ty, it has gar­nered glow­ing advance praise from casu­al read­ers and pro­fes­sion­al review­ers alike. Peo­ple are cel­e­brat­ing the book’s inven­tive spir­it, espe­cial­ly its bold use of an unre­li­able nar­ra­tor, which deliv­ers deli­cious­ly dark humor wrapped in a child-friend­ly pack­age. But what makes this book tru­ly stand out is how its cre­ators sub­tly weave in ele­ments of sci­ence lit­er­a­cy and media aware­ness, turn­ing what looks like a sim­ple pic­ture book into some­thing far more lay­ered. For read­ers eager to dis­cov­er what pic­ture books can real­ly do, this is the kind of title that makes you sit up and pay atten­tion.

A Powerhouse Creative Duo

The author of the text, Neil Sharp­son (b. 1983), may be a new­com­er to the world of children’s books—Don’t Trust Fish is his very first pic­ture book—but he’s no stranger to sto­ry­telling. A sea­soned play­wright and sci­ence fic­tion nov­el­ist, Sharp­son has already earned recog­ni­tion in Ire­land and abroad for his work for adult audi­ences. Since 2012, he’s also main­tained a pro­lif­ic blog (unshavedmouse.com) focused on ani­mat­ed films and pop cul­ture cri­tique, show­cas­ing his deep pas­sion for visu­al sto­ry­telling. On top of that, he’s a father of two and a devot­ed bed­time read­er, with plen­ty of pic­ture-book hours under his belt. You can feel that accu­mu­lat­ed nar­ra­tive intu­ition in every twist of this book.

Illus­tra­tor Dan San­tat (b. 1975), by con­trast, is a giant in the children’s book world. With over 100 books to his name—including pic­ture books, graph­ic nov­els, and mid­dle-grade fiction—he’s best known for pic­ture bookThe Adven­tures of Beek­le: The Unimag­i­nary Friendwhich(in Chi­nese named 《小白找朋友》)won the 2015 Calde­cott Gold Medal, and his graph­ic mem­oir A First Time for Every­thing, which took home the 2023 Nation­al Book Award for Young People’s Lit­er­a­ture. Santat’s work is unmis­tak­able: bold col­ors, dynam­ic com­po­si­tions, expres­sive lines, and a cin­e­mat­ic sense of tim­ing and emo­tion. But what sets him apart is his abil­i­ty to tap into a child’s perspective—with empa­thy, with ener­gy, and with an eye for absur­di­ty. He’s also a dad, and Beek­le, in fact, is named after a made-up word invent­ed by his own son. That same play­ful spir­it and intu­itive under­stand­ing of how kids think puls­es through every image he cre­ates.

In Don’t Trust Fish, it’s the fusion of Sharpson’s irrev­er­ent wit and Santat’s visu­al exu­ber­ance that makes the humor land so per­fect­ly. This isn’t just a fun­ny book—it’s a smart, lay­ered one, where every joke is doing dou­ble duty: mak­ing you laugh and mak­ing you think. Espe­cial­ly through Santat’s illus­tra­tions, which ampli­fy the absur­di­ty of the fishy world they depict, the book becomes a delight­ful­ly strange and sur­pris­ing­ly insight­ful read.

From Science Facts to Sci-Fi Suspicion: A Genre-Bending Twist

This book might give even the most orga­nized librar­i­an a bit of a headache: where exact­ly do you shelve it? At first glance, Don’t Trust Fish looks like your clas­sic non­fic­tion title—an ani­mal primer, no less. It starts with text­book-like seri­ous­ness, guid­ing young read­ers through the famil­iar cat­e­gories of mam­mals, rep­tiles, and birds. Then it nat­u­ral­ly tran­si­tions to marine life… until the fish arrive. That’s when things take a sud­den, spec­tac­u­lar turn. The tone shifts. The col­or palette explodes. The nar­ra­tive jumps the rails and careens into some­thing part sci­ence fic­tion, part mys­tery, part espi­onage thriller—and maybe even a lit­tle true crime. And through­out it all is a con­stant refrain: Don’t trust fish. Don’t trust fish. Don’t trust fish. It echoes like a hyp­not­ic chant, grow­ing loud­er and more insis­tent. Accord­ing to the old rule of propaganda—“repeat a lie often enough, and it becomes the truth”—this one’s got us hooked.

The nar­ra­tor (whom sharp-eyed read­ers might spot lurk­ing in the illus­tra­tions) begins in the voice of a respectable sci­ence edu­ca­tor. But there’s some­thing fishy going on. The voice becomes increas­ing­ly man­ic, increas­ing­ly para­noid, until we’re no longer sure if this is a lec­ture or a con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry. The nar­ra­tor, pos­si­bly a cute lit­tle sea crea­ture them­selves, lays out a case against fish that is both utter­ly ridicu­lous and dis­turbing­ly plau­si­ble. Fish, we’re told, are not to be trust­ed. They’re sneaky. They’re always watch­ing. They hide their intel­li­gence. They live under­wa­ter, which makes them ide­al spies. The book takes us into an imag­ined fish society—one with sur­veil­lance oper­a­tions hid­den in gold­fish bowls and toi­let tanks, where schools of fish lit­er­al­ly go to “school” to study the human body and dis­cov­er our shame­ful addic­tion to pie. One of the most com­pelling pieces of evi­dence? “Ships always sink at sea. They nev­er sink on land.” (Try argu­ing with that!)

Through this bizarre, dead­pan nar­ra­tion, the read­er is pulled into a world where log­ic has been clev­er­ly twist­ed and every­thing is sud­den­ly up for debate. Do we real­ly know what fish are up to? Are they plan­ning some­thing? What else have we been told that might not be true? This is where Don’t Trust Fish moves beyond the bounds of a typ­i­cal children’s book. It’s not just a fun­ny story—it’s a genre-defy­ing, mind-bend­ing piece of satire. With every page turn, it leads read­ers fur­ther into absur­di­ty, until they’re ques­tion­ing not just fish, but the nature of knowl­edge, truth, and the sto­ries we choose to believe.

Dealing a Wild Hand: The Power of the Unreliable Narrator

One of the defin­ing fea­tures of Don’t Trust Fish is its use of an unre­li­able narrator—a sto­ry­telling device that glee­ful­ly toss­es out the rule­book. It’s hard not to think of Jon Klassen’s This Is Not My Hat, a Calde­cott and Green­away Medal win­ner, where a tiny fish insists—insists!—that the hat it stole is now safe and sound on its head… all while Klassen’s illus­tra­tions qui­et­ly (and hilar­i­ous­ly) tell anoth­er sto­ry entire­ly. That mis­match between what’s said and what’s shown cre­ates a deli­cious ten­sion that read­ers love to decode. Whether or not Sharp­son and San­tat were direct­ly inspired by Klassen, their approach taps into the same visu­al-ver­bal dis­so­nance with equal­ly bril­liant effect.

From the begin­ning, read­ers of Don’t Trust Fish are dropped into a world that feels fac­tu­al but is, in fact, increas­ing­ly absurd. The nar­ra­tor warns us not to trust fish and pro­ceeds to offer “evi­dence” that ranges from plau­si­ble to pre­pos­ter­ous: their unpre­dictable behav­ior, their decep­tive appear­ances, their watery home that allows them to sneak around unno­ticed. With grow­ing para­noia dis­guised as author­i­ty, the nar­ra­tive spi­rals into some­thing halfway between a nature doc­u­men­tary and a con­spir­a­cy pod­cast.

This unre­li­able nar­ra­tion is elevated—supercharged—by Dan Santat’s illus­tra­tions. His art­work doesn’t just sup­port the text; it under­cuts, exag­ger­ates, or wild­ly expands on it. When the nar­ra­tor describes fish with bio­lu­mi­nes­cence, for exam­ple, San­tat shows a deep-sea angler­fish lur­ing in its prey with eerie, glow­ing bait. The scene is equal parts grotesque and hilar­i­ous. But the real kick­er might be the poor, gullible lit­tle crab who falls for the trick—innocent, wide-eyed, defense­less… and, just maybe, not so inno­cent after all. (Fans of Klassen will recall his own med­dle­some crab in This Is Not My Hat—coincidence?)

How­ev­er, despite the extreme­ly humor­ous tone of the sto­ry, there is a sub­tle irony behind it about infor­ma­tion asym­me­try and blind trust. Through the exag­ger­at­ed depic­tion of the “fish con­spir­a­cy”, the sto­ry may actu­al­ly be a crit­i­cism of the exces­sive informa­ti­za­tion, the spread of false infor­ma­tion and the “pic­tures are the truth” think­ing in our mod­ern soci­ety. In the Inter­net age, espe­cial­ly with the rise of AI tech­nol­o­gy, the reli­a­bil­i­ty of graph­ic infor­ma­tion is often ques­tioned, and the “fish” in the book is a sym­bol of this — they seem real, but behind them are full of uncer­tain­ty, and even imply false­hood and decep­tion.

As the old Chi­nese proverb goes, “If you believe every­thing in books, bet­ter to have no books at all.” In today’s world, per­haps that applies to images, too: “If you believe every pic­ture, you may as well have no pic­tures.” Which rais­es a tan­ta­liz­ing pos­si­bil­i­ty:Could this be a pic­ture book warn­ing you not to believe pic­ture books?Well, this seems to be a pic­ture book that reminds read­ers “Don’t trust pic­ture books too much”? !

Challenging Norms with Critical Thinking

It seems clear that the use of an unre­li­able nar­ra­tor in Don’t Trust Fish is not sim­ply a gim­mick or a joke. Rather, it’s a delib­er­ate choice to explore the unique pos­si­bil­i­ties of the pic­ture book form. One of the great­est strengths of pic­ture books lies in the inter­play between text and image—and this book clev­er­ly uses that dynam­ic to empha­size the unre­li­a­bil­i­ty of infor­ma­tion itself. As we enter the age of AI, the ques­tion of truth­ful­ness in the infor­ma­tion we receive becomes more crit­i­cal than ever. Chil­dren today are exposed to an over­whelm­ing amount of mis­in­for­ma­tion and exag­ger­at­ed “facts.” Learn­ing to eval­u­ate what is true, and devel­op­ing the abil­i­ty to think crit­i­cal­ly and calm­ly in the face of uncer­tain­ty, are essen­tial skills they need to build.

The unre­li­able nar­ra­tor is an effec­tive nar­ra­tive device to teach this. Through a tone that seems seri­ous at first, paired with exag­ger­at­ed and absurd log­ic, and rein­forced by repeat­ed twists and turns (some of which await the reader’s own dis­cov­ery), the book becomes not just a humor­ous read but a men­tal exer­cise. It chal­lenges the author­i­ty of the book itself. And in doing so, it helps young read­ers real­ize that anything—any “truth”—can be ques­tioned, re-exam­ined, and decon­struct­ed. This reflec­tive kind of humor is one of the book’s most pow­er­ful traits.

Unlike stan­dard school text­books, pic­ture books often thrive on the idea that “there is no sin­gle cor­rect answer.” Every read­er may see things differently—and that’s okay.After all, real life rarely comes with neat answers. Still, most books try to per­suade the read­er that their sto­ry might be believ­able, or at least pos­si­ble. Don’t Trust Fish goes a step fur­ther:Don’t even trust this book too much!- This is indeed a valu­able reminder for today’s times:Don’t trust any infor­ma­tion eas­i­ly, no mat­ter where it comes from, even from books.For every­thing, we must find a way to trace the source, to see who said it, what the basis was, and why they said it that way…and all of this is con­veyed to young read­ers through clever nar­ra­tive struc­ture, humor­ous illus­tra­tions and high­ly cre­ative con­tent, this impor­tant sur­vival wis­dom in the AI era.

A Story That Refuses to End Easily

So now, impa­tient read­ers might be dying to know: What’s the real truth behind Don’t Trust Fish? —Sor­ry, no spoil­ers here. That would be like reveal­ing the mur­der­er in a detec­tive sto­ry before any­one has read the final chap­ter. But I can give you a clue: when this pic­ture-book-turned-detec­tive-thriller flash­es “The End” on its final page… don’t believe it either. Don’t leave your seat. Don’t rush to the bath­room. Stay for the credits—because yes, the “cul­prit” is hid­den in the post­script! Even then, don’t close the book too quick­ly. Look at the ded­i­ca­tion page: a big fish is swal­low­ing a small­er fish. Why? And who is Elsa Fow­ley-Doyle, to whom the book is ded­i­cat­ed? Could she be con­nect­ed to Arthur Conan Doyle in some clever, tongue-in-cheek way?

By tra­di­tion­al pic­ture book stan­dards, this is an odd book—it brings togeth­er a whole mix of rarely-seen ele­ments. But you could also say it’s a rare gem: a book that is fun, fun­ny, and thought-pro­vok­ing, with plen­ty to say to read­ers of all ages. If you enjoy pic­ture books that break rules, tick­le your brain, and speak direct­ly to our times, Don’t Trust Fish is not to be missed.

Of course… you don’t have to take my word for it. After all, I’m just the sto­ry­teller -Ajia ……

- Ajia (Writ­ten on the third day after April Fool’s Day, 2025)