One Smart Fish

This is a playful, tongue-in-cheek attempt to make accessible to young children, the almost inconceivable notion of the evolution of life from the sea to the land in story form.

Smart Fish is nothing much to look at unlike his flashy fishy friends, but what he lacks in finery, he more than makes up for in brain power. This chess-playing genius wants nothing more than to walk upon the land. Not content with lounging at the landside where fishes go for their holidays, he makes himself a set of foot-shaped wellies and astounds his fellow fishy friends by walking up the beach.

But that is not quite the end of the story, as big ideas – walking being one – have a habit of catching on, give or take a few hundred million years. And thus, those fish, or rather their ancestors, become reptiles and before we know where we are, there we are...

Wormell’s watery, watercolour world teams with weird and wonderful fish of all shapes, sizes and colours.