Wally the Walking Fish Meets Madison and Cooper: My Review

Tonite my five year old and I read a cute book that was full of information about animals. Wally the Walking Fish Meets Madison and Cooper features a young girl, her yellow lab and Wally, a walking catfish. Madison and Cooper are fishing when they catch Wally. Cooper wants to eat Wally, but Madison is a catch-and-release kind of girl. When she removes Wally from the hook, he starts to walk back to the pond and Madison asks where he is going. That's when she learns he can walk. Madison decides that the three of them will be friends, and they go swimming in the pond, meet Betty Beaver, play in the sand and go walking in the woods. Several pages in the book have text boxes on them that explain facts about some of the mentioned things. One talks about yellow labradors, another, walking catfish. Beavers are featured in the third box, mudskippers (another land-adapted fish) in the fourth. The last two boxes talk about flying fish and mushrooms.

I liked the artwork in the book. My favorite character was the lab, Cooper.

My main problem with the book was that it was all dialogue, with nothing to show who was speaking. Sometimes it took me a couple of runs through the page to figure it out. Also, this was tonight's bedtime story. While she enjoyed the story (with me adding in which character was talking) when I tried to read or discuss the text boxes, my five year old quickly lost interest.

I'd like to thank the author, Gary Lamit for sending me this copy to review. You can see some of the illustrations at his website, which offers the opportunity to purchase the book in hardcover, softcover or as an ebook.