Little White Fish and the Beautiful Sea

It's not easy to review this book. I feel that it misses a beginning, an introduction to the different characters, before we stumbled into the first dialogues.

On the first page, the dialogue starts with “See, anemones are so beautiful”. Then the Octopus asked the Fish: “What do you think is the most beautiful?”. At this point, I swipe left, thinking I missed a page, but it really was the first page of the book. I was confused –what does the octopus means by the most beautiful? Of plants? Of the things around him? Then, as I kept turning the pages, I started getting more informations about the questions asked, and overall the theme of the book, which was “what is the most beautiful thing in the ocean?”

Finishing the book, I realized that it was a book about listening to your friends, opening your mind with what other think is beautiful, and enjoying beauty together. What didn't work is that there was a hierarchy on the idea of what one finds beautiful. I didn't feel like watching a sunset together had to necessarily be the most beautiful thing for all animals. I feel like it disregarded each animal's way of enjoying beauty, wether on their own or together, and introduced hierarchy when it didn't have to be.

There are better books to explore the idea of being together, helping each other, and enjoying people's company, but they don't feel enigmatic at first and then hierarchical in the end, like in this book.

Thank you NetGalley and Clavis Publishing for providing me with a free digital copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.

Read and reviewed: 2018-11-02