The Pout-Pout Fish and the Mad, Mad Day

by Deborah Diesen, Dan Hanna (Illustrator)

Overview

The New York Times-bestselling children's book series returns with The Pout-Pout Fish and the Mad, Mad Day.

The Pout-Pout Fish's morning has been maddening and rough. Disappointments and frustrations—Mr. Fish has had enough! It's been one thing, then another, then another stacked on top. He's mad and getting madder. Is there any way to stop?

Swim along with Mr. Fish as he faces his anger and gains new understandings. With a little help from his friends, he might just discover the healing power of words and self-compassion.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780374390259
Publisher:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date:	06/13/2023
Series:	Pout-Pout Fish Adventure Series
Pages:	32
Sales rank:	92,789
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 6.40(h) x 0.80(d)
Age Range:	3 Months to 3 Years

About the Author

Deborah Diesen is the author of the New York Times-bestselling Pout-Pout Fish books, and has worked as a bookseller, a bookkeeper, and a reference librarian. She lives in Michigan with her family.

Dan Hanna has over ten years’ experience in the animation industry, and his work has appeared on BBC America and the Cartoon Network. He lives in Camarillo, California.

Editorial Reviews

Deborah Diesen is the author of the New York Times–bestselling Pout-Pout Fish books, and has worked as a bookseller, a bookkeeper, and a reference librarian. She lives in Michigan with her family. Visit her at deborahdiesen.com.

Dan Hanna has over ten years’ experience in the animation industry, and his work has appeared on BBC America and the Cartoon Network. He lives in Oxnard, California.

From the Publisher

2021-03-31
Pout-Pout goes off the deep end.

Plainly afflicted with anger issues, Mr. Fish leverages a broken knickknack, difficulty finding glue, and the mild reactions of his neighbors to his plight into a towering, out-of-control tantrum. Mrs. Squid offers a tried-and-true (though, at least for a fish, physically impossible) counterstrategy: “To get started, simply breathe. / Then slowly count from one to ten / To counteract the seethe.” Miss Shimmer, another fish, suggests using his words to talk out his feelings…which he does (though only in the pictures, as Diesen declines to use her words to describe what he actually says). Finally, “with words and self-compassion / I bring anger to a stop,” and once he’s gotten his “grrrrr” out, the glue even turns up so that in no time fish and fracture are both “good as new.” Unlike the “seethe” in Molly Bang’s When Sophie Gets Angry—Really, Really Angry… (1999) or Polly Dunbar’s Red Red Red (2020), the rage here comes across as manufactured rather than genuine—and the coping techniques are more described in general terms than actually demonstrated. Hanna’s cartoon cast of fancifully colored deep-sea denizens is as googly-eyed as ever. He adds some amusing details, as with the labels on Mr. Fish’s storage bins (“Might Need Someday” and “Not Sure will look later”), but the souvenir from “Machoo Poochy” is an unfortunate choice. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10-by-20-inch double-page spreads viewed at 75% of actual size.)

An undistinguished addition to the infuriatingly overstuffed shelves of anger-management treatises. (Picture book. 6-8)

Kirkus Reviews