Rating: WARTY!
This was one of those thick-paged books for very young children and the theme is of the 'turn that frown upside down' variety, which I've never thought was a particularly charmed idea. While forcing yourself to smile does have a positive effect in mood lifting, you can't fix depression by chanting happy rhymes and demanding people cheer up. That's like saying 'find something new' will fix the economy.
This book seemed like it was too ready to claim 'Mission Accomplished' when the mission had barely begun and was ill-conceived to begin with. Plus there was far too much uninvited infringement of personal space so I consider this to be poorly thought-out. It did not help that the fish was being condemned for how it looked. That was a poorly considered idea right there.
The idea is that this fish has a perpetual pout and it's only fixed when the fish has an unfortunate accident and is turned upside down - like this has cured the frowning 'problem'. It just felt wrong from the start and wasn't appropriate in my opinion. I'm not saying that the basic idea was a bad one in itself, but the execution was completely wrong, and I can't commend this as a worthy read - especially not at sixteen bucks for this little thing.
