I get asked to review kids’ books sometimes, because of my teacher thing, so I recently read The Fourteenth Goldfish by Jennifer L. Holm.
It’s a cute story about a girl whose grandfather sends himself back to being a teenager. They marketed it as being about passion for science, and there is some of that in the story, but mostly it seems like coming of age. That said, it’s a little on the young side. I would market this towards elementary school, even though the characters are in high school. It’s written to that level.
This seems silly to complain about, and it’s not the author’s fault, but I was really distracted by the fish art at the beginning of each chapter, mostly because the numbers of fish kept changing, going up, then down, but they didn’t match the chapter number, which bugged me. My brain works that way, though, and the distraction became an issue. Also, the title is explained in the story, but it doesn’t really make sense. I don’t want to give away any story details, but it seemed a stretch to relate the goldfish story back to what happens in the real story. The ending also seems a little out there, unbelievable. Not that the main premise is totally believable either, but that one I can roll with.
Like I said, though, it’s a cute story, an easy read, for an elementary school kid (or language learners in the older grades), but the story is pretty simplistic and has some issues that honestly, most kids probably wouldn’t notice.
Kathy Nida 