A Fish Out of Water By Helen Marion Palmer
Illus. in color. Comic pictures show how the fish rapidly outgrows its bowl, a vase, a cook pot, a bathtub.--The New York Times. A Fish Out of Water
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A Fish Out of Water, Helen Marion Palmer
The story is about a boy who buys a fish, named Otto, from a pet store.
The store owner, Mr. Carp, gives the boy instructions on how to care for the fish, including strict feeding instructions: Never feed him a lot. Just so much, and no more! Never more than a spot! Or something may happen. You never know what.
When the boy inadvertently disobeys these instructions out of compassion for his new pet, Otto begins to grow uncontrollably, quickly outgrowing his fishbowl.
This leads the boy to move him into a series of successively larger containers, ending with the bathtub. When Otto outgrows the tub, the house begins to flood.
The boy then requests help from a police officer and the fire department, who help him take Otto down to the local pool.
There, they drop the fish in, causing it to expand to the size of the pool and scare off all of the swimmers.
Since Otto keeps on growing, the boy calls Mr. Carp. He is not surprised, as boys always ignore his feeding instructions.
When Mr. Carp arrives, he dives into the pool and pulls Otto below.
Eventually, he emerges with the fish, back to its normal size.
He refuses to say how he did it, but tells the boy to never overfeed Otto again, and the boy takes his advice to heart.
تاریخ نخستین خوانش
عنوان: یک ماهی بیرون از آب؛ نویسنده: هلن ماریون پالمر؛ موضوع داستانهای کودکان از نویسندگان ایالات متحده آمریکا - سده 20م
پسر بچه ای از یک فروشگاه حیوانات خانگی، یک «ماهی» میخرد، آقای «کرب» صاحب فروشگاه به او میگوید، هرگزی به ماهی غذای بسیار ندهید؛ تنها یک ظرف غذا به او بدهید، وگرنه هرگزی نمیدانید چه رویدادی روی میدهد؛ پسر به خانه میرود و همگی مواد غذایی خریداری شده را یکباره در ظرفی میریزد؛ ماهی همه را میخورد، و دیوانه وار رشد میکند؛ پسر بچه مجبور است ظرفهای بزرگتر و بزرگتری پیدا کند، تا اینکه مجبور میشود با فروشنده تماس بگیرد؛
تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 11/03/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی English I found another book I read as a kid. I love that. As I read the story, it's like something tugging on memories and I start noticing details I remember thinking about as a kid. It's pretty cool.
It's easy to see the artwork of P. D. Eastman here. He has that surreal touch to things that makes magic.
A boy gets a fish at a pet store and the storeman tells him to only feed him a pinch or you never know what can happen. Of course the boy goes home and dumps all the food in the bowl at once. The fish eats it all and begins to grow like crazy. He has to find bigger and bigger containers until he has to call the storeman. What I like about his character is he is doing some crazy stuff at the end and the author never bothers to explain it. It is all mystery and things just all get fixed up. Today, everything has reason somehow. This is sort of refreshing.
It's a fun story that kids will still enjoy today. English This is perhaps my most special read of this year. Why? Because this is the first book that my daughter, Shrija, read aloud to me.
As parents, we are used to reading to our kids but when the favour is returned, believe me it is an experience far sweeter than any other in this world!
The story is about a little boy who buys a fish as a pet and is warned not to overfeed it. However, children will remain children and do what they are specifically told not to do. So this boy feeds the fish more than is necessary and the fish starts growing big. What happens next to the boy and the fish is told in such a beautiful manner, with such wonderful illustrations that it made for a perfect read with my daughter.
However, the best part of the story was my daughter pausing after every page and explaining the story to me. I am one proud mother today and an extremely happy one too. Here's looking forward to some great buddy reads with my daughter in the future. :) :)
All five stars go to Shrija for making my day a perfect one :) :)
English When your parents ask you to not feed the fish much, for once, you should listen to their advice! Read it to see what happens when you don't follow the rules! English I find it hard to read this book without thinking about Helen Palmer Geisel's suicide, which came after Dr. Seuss' adultery with the woman who would become his second wife. At one point in the note she wrote, I am too old and enmeshed in everything you do and are, that I cannot conceive of life without you, and I felt that sentiment when I read A Fish Out of Water last night.
Palmer (I'll stick with her chosen nom de plume from now on) took an old story of Seuss's -- a story he had abandoned -- and turned it into A Fish Out of Water. It is a quaint little story. Sorta cute. Sorta fun. Sorta moral. Yet it is easy to see why Seuss abandoned the idea. It doesn't go anywhere, and Palmer can't save it from itself.
There is only a hint of Seussian language, just a touch of his playful rhyming, and I can't help wondering if Palmer lifted that section from Seuss original. Regardless, what I saw (imagined) while reading this was a person, likely talented in her own right, intimately linked to one of the true greats in their field. She couldn't reach his level. Not ever. So there she was, completing his abandoned stories, feeling, however incorrectly, that she was only publishing her work because of her link to her husband, and feeling a failure, feeling unworthy.
I imagine it is similar to what EL James' husband must be feeling right about now. Here's a little piece of advice. No artist, in any discipline, should ever marry someone in their discipline. It leads to tragedy.
I can't see myself reading this story to Scoutie too often. Just the thought of it depresses me, but it is not bad. It is worth a read or two. Just don't keep anything I've written here in mind. Maybe I should put a meta-spoiler alert at the top of this?
One other thought ... who gets the royalties to Palmer's work? I wonder if it is Seuss' second wife. How depressing would that be? English
From an adult's perspective, this book is absolutely ridiculous. Feeding a fish too much causes him to grow to an obscene size within hours? I'm sure that is probably what made my parents laugh uncontrollably as they read this to me.
So why do I adore this book? Well, slap me around and call me nostalgic, but Dad read this to me. He had some of the greatest voices when reading this book, and I have so many fond memories of me and my sis sitting on either side of him as he would wail, WHY DID I FEED MY FISH TOO MUCH?
At the very least, in a humorous way, it tries to teach children to be responsible and listen the first time, particularly when caring for pets. Mostly, though, it's goofy and funny and light-hearted. And I love it :) English Just as I remembered. English When I was a kid, I always liked reading the “About the Author” blurb at the end of a book – probably the budding quizzer in me wanted every piece of available information. One of my favourite childhood books was A Fish Out of Water and my version had no such blurb – or if it did it was on a long-lost dust-jacket. So I’ve written one myself:
Helen Palmer was born in New York in 1898. For 40 years she was married to Dr Seuss. They had no children – Helen was unable to. In later years she suffered from cancer and partial paralysis. For the last few years of Helen’s life, Dr Seuss was having an affair with the woman who would later become his second wife. In 1967 an ill, depressed and heartbroken Helen committed suicide by an overdose of barbiturates.
Maybe there was a reason there was no such blurb.
We’ll get to A Fish Out of Water shortly, but first a little more on Helen Palmer. In 1927, Helen married Theodore Geisel, known to friends as Ted, and later known to the world as Dr Seuss. Ted Geisel wanted to become a teacher but Helen, six years his senior, encouraged him to make a career from his artwork. She was his editor, advisor, business manager and inspiration. She co-founded the “Beginner Books” imprint - you’d recognise the Cat in the Hat logo – in 1957.
And yet, a decade later Helen was dead. Within a year of her suicide Dr Seuss remarried. His second wife, Audrey, is still alive and in her mid-90s continues to serve as president of Dr Seuss Enterprises. There seems little doubt that the younger Audrey provided a renewed inspiration for Dr Seuss, who was 64 when he married for the second time. His niece Peggy described Helen’s death as “her last and greatest gift to him”. Her suicide note speaks for itself:
Dear Ted, What has happened to us? I don't know. I feel myself in a spiral, going down down down, into a black hole from which there is no escape, no brightness. And loud in my ears from every side I hear, 'failure, failure, failure...' I love you so much ... I am too old and enmeshed in everything you do and are, that I cannot conceive of life without you ... My going will leave quite a rumor but you can say I was overworked and overwrought. Your reputation with your friends and fans will not be harmed ... Sometimes think of the fun we had all thru the years ...
She might have heard “failure, failure, failure” from every side, but few people have given the world more joy than Helen Palmer. She gave the world Dr Seuss. But for her prodding, he might never have gone beyond the cartoons he drew as a college student. And Helen Palmer’s name also lives on as an author herself.
But even there she remains in her husband’s giant shadow, for A Fish Out of Water in fact originated as a short story by Dr Seuss, titled Gustav the Goldfish. It was originally published in a magazine in 1950, with the trademark Seuss rhymes and illustrations. You can see a comparison here. A decade later, he gave Helen permission to revise the story to make it a suitable “Beginner Book”, which required a more basic vocabulary.
In hindsight, the absurd premise is pure Seuss. A boy buys a pet goldfish and, against the advice of the pet-store owner, overfeeds it. The fish quickly outgrows every vessel in which the boy tries to house it, until even the local swimming pool is becoming too small to hold it. At this point the pet-store owner, Mr Carp, dives with a mysterious toolbox and magically returns the fish to its original size.
The illustrations by P. D. Eastman – a protégé of Dr Seuss – bring a charming realism to the preposterous story. Eastman’s drawings are much truer to life than the zany art of Dr Seuss, and something about the realistic looking figures – the baffled policeman and the concerned fireman – make it easy for a child to put themselves in the position of the little boy, to think maybe this really could happen!
I had never heard of Gustav the Goldfish until researching this blog, and I don’t know if I’d have preferred the Seussian version as a kid or A Fish Out of Water. They each appeal in different ways. All I can say with certainty is that I loved A Fish Out of Water and that Helen Palmer, despite her tragic end, was no failure.
http://dadreads.blogspot.co.uk/2016/0... English I remember reading this many years ago when I was young. As we recent got some goldfish, and they always looked SO hungry (resulting in some overfeeding by the kids) this book popped into my mind and I looked it up and borrowed it from the library.
Bring a I Can Read book with the Dr. Suess logo, I was expecting it to be a little more rhymey than it was. But a cute, quick read, with darling illustrations.
... with a reminder to the kids that the story IS make believe, that a fish really wouldn't grow, the water would just get so dirty they might die. English In this humorous book, a little boy buys a fish from a pet store. The boy overfeeds his fish. The fish grows and grows and grows. English
