In The Little Black Fish, the main character is different from the other fish in his small stream. He wonders where the water in the stream comes from and where it goes when it falls over the rocks. All of the older fish say he is wrong to want to leave the stream and explore; it is too dangerous, even his mother says so. But he decides he must go on his own and see the world, even if it means facing unknown dangers.
This book shows how different personalities can still interact caringly to help each other achieve different or maybe similar ends. A great story for Social Emotional Learning.

Thank you #netgalley for giving me a copy of #TheLittleBlackFish to review. This is a good folk tale about a little fish whip wants to explore. It's longer than I expected and longer than my kids would sit through, but it's still a good story with interesting illustrations.

It's always so fascinating to find these older stories in translation! I was excited to find this one. It's a good story for all ages. I love the message of it doesn't matter what you do a long as you harm no other. Old message in a great tale. Little black fish leaves his small river home to journey into the wider world and leans many lessons along the way.

The Little Black Fish by Samad Behrangi is a story of bravery and adventure. The Little Black Fish sets out on a journey to discover where his stream ends. He did not listen to the advice of his mother and neighbors about sticking to the stream but went out to explore the world. As a result, he found many new animals such as the frog, deer, crab and the harmful pelicans.

The illustrations by Farshid Mesghali were unique. The pictures were mostly black and white with a few colors highlighted. This is a good book to inculcate a spark of adventure in little ones (5-7 years old).

With age comes wisdom. But sometimes with age, we lose our dreams. And wisdom is a pretty poor replacement for dreams.

There are a lot of interesting themes in this book. Working together. Loyalty. Bravery. Those in power trying to turn those working together against each other.

Written in 1968 in Iran, this is a fantastic kids’ book with lots of ideas. Of course, it was banned - we wouldn’t want people to think.

Take a look.

<i>Thanks to NetGalley and Tiny Owl Publishing for a copy in return for an honest review.</i>

Little Black Fish is a longer than average picture book about looking beyond your own borders. The Little Black Fish wants to find out what is beyond his stream, but he’s told not to question things and just do what all the other fish in the stream are doing. He decides to adventure out anyway despite what he was told and meets several animals on his journey.
I’m not sure what the target age is for this book, probably upper elementary. It would not be a story my children would be interested in, but I still appreciated the message of following your heart and exploring beyond your borders!
Thank you to NetGalley, Myrick Marketing & Media and Tiny Owl Publishing for this advanced reader copy.

Hiding behind fanciful stories, are often messages, that are hidden, until you know where to look for them. Such was the case for this picture book. Much the way the Johnathan Smith hid messages in his works, as did Samad Behrangi, and he was murdered for his stories, and activism.

But, if you read this story just on the surface, it is also a cute stories for children, teaching them to understand those new people that you meet along the way.

The little black fish wants to see the world, wants to meet other people and learn other ways. This is abhorrent to how a society wants people to behave, if they want to keep them ignorant. And so the Black Fish learns about time and space

<img src="https://g2comm.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Screen-Shot-2019-02-15-at-11.35.42-PM.png" alt="Little black fish and lizard" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-4971" />

<img src="https://g2comm.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Screen-Shot-2019-02-15-at-11.36.02-PM.png" alt="" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-4970" />

Good picture book to have in librarians for its international background. .

Thanks to Netgalley from making this book available for an honest review.

Visually Appealing ~ Sweet ~ Readable
tl; dr: Fish and his fishy mom deal with the big questions of life

My daughter "read" this and then admitted to only looking at the pictures. She was at it a long time, too. When I went to review the book, I understood why. The pictures are exceptional, with a graphic, printmaking quality. The text is strong, though fairly long. Honestly, if the text was tighter this book would be a five. The message of the story, about thinking of yourself in relation to your world and others, gets at the deepest questions children ask, the ones adults often realize they can't answer. So, I think the author was hard-pressed to get the story much shorter. In some ways, this might work better for early middle school, though the images code younger. Either way, find it if only for the pictures.

Thanks to NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I'm really not sure, at this point, who the intended audience was for <i>The Little Black Fish</i> by Samed Behrangi and illustrated by Farshid Mesghali. It seems a bit too advanced for a large majority of the children who would be interested in the book and the artwork. The story is also pretty lengthy, so I don't really see it keeping everyone's attention for extended periods of time. <i>The Little Black Fish</i> begins with a grandmother fish telling her thousands of grandchildren a story, then segues into the tale of a small black fish who strikes out to learn about the world despite the misgivings and urgings for him to stay from all the fish in his pond.

The little fish's adventure is one that alternates between interesting and weird. While I think the story got off to a good start, a commentary on staying in your comfort zone instead of going out to learn about the world, it definitely grew stranger and less interesting as the book continued. At one point the fish gets himself a sword and cuts the beak of a pelican to help himself and other fish escape which I frankly just found annoyingly strange and unrealistic.

The way the story ended was decent, coming back to the grandmother and her grandchildren, leaving the little black fish's story unfinished but having inspired one of her grandfish to dream of exploring the world. For the most part, I think the message will be readily obvious to anyone who reads it.

While I found the artwork to be pleasing, I definitely don't see it as the sort of artwork that will keep most children engaged. It lacks color and at times the characters can seem somewhat creepy, especially those with red eyes. A lot of the images can blend together since the majority of them use incredibly similar colors and don't really integrate any different ones.

I'm kind of apathetic about this book as a whole. I didn't love it but I didn't hate it. The message was nice, at least, but the story itself wasn't as good as I would've hoped. Though I appreciated the desire for an adventure and learning, I didn't really like the main character and parts of the story were strange. It's not a terrible book by any means, but probably not something I'd ever pick up again or give to a kid I know.

<i>I received a free copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. </i>