The Fisherman and His Wife

by Rachel Isadora

Book Overview

Caldecott Honor winning artist Rachel Isadora brings another fabulous fairy tale to brilliant life with her stunning collages. The Brothers Grimm story of the kind fisherman who catches an enchanted fish, and his greedy wife who always wants more, is perfect for these "give-me" times.

Rachel Isadora's captivating collage-style artwork, featuring the African landscape and the increasingly turbulent ocean, provides a wonderful new backdrop for this...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0399247718
• ISBN13: 9780399247712
• Release Date: January 2008
• Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers
• Length: 32 Pages
• Weight: 1.09 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 10.3" x 10.2"
• Age Range: 4 to 8 years
• Grade Range: Preschool to Grade 3

Customer Reviews

A Lalapalooza Book

What a super interpretation of a classic story. I read this to my son and I really chuckled at Ms. Isadora's humor. My son thought it a great, wacky story and asked how a writer from so long ago wrote such a "real" story. We really got into the pictures and my son wanted to try his hand at collage art work. We cut pictures from magazines and different papers and he made his own beach scene. The book was very creative and blew us away. We will take out some of Ms. Isadore's other books.

Rutgers University Project on Economics and Children

Using an African-themed setting that includes striking fabric designs, Rachel Isadora retells the classic Brothers Grimm tale about a hapless fisherman and his greedy wife. When the fisherman is surprised to catch a talking flounder, he consents to its request for release back to the sea. The wife, upset that her husband came home with no fish to cook for dinner, insisted that he go back and ask the magical fish to grant them a wish. What started out as a reasonable wish to replace their dilapidated and stinky shack with a new hut that they genuinely needed, turned into a subsequent set of wishes for increasingly grandiose positions of wealth and power. The more unreasonable the wishes became, that's the darker and angrier the stormy sea grew, until the wife's final extravagant and impossible wish led them back to their original situation in the dilapidated shack. This book serves as a nice vehicle for teaching about the difference between wants and needs and the potential pitfalls of allowing the pursuit of wants to escalate.

I want more!

Reviewed by Matthew Feliciano (age 8) for Reader Views (5/08) The theme of "The Fisherman and His Wife" is "I want more!" There was a fisherman who lived in a pigsty with his wife. One day he went fishing and caught an unusual flounder. This was not a fish at all but an enchanted prince. Instead of killing and eating the fish, the fisherman let it go. To be grateful, the fish offered him a wish. The man asked for nothing because he liked his life. When he told his wife, she wanted a hut for them to live in, so the next day the fisherman asked the fish for a hut. When he got home, there it was. Then the wife wanted more. She asked for a stone castle, and then asked to be king, then emperor, pope and finally god. Each time the husband had to go ask the fish for another wish, the sea was angrier and angrier. However, the fish gave the man what he asked for each time. The last time when the wife wanted to be god, the man returned home to find everything as it was before he met the fish. Enough was enough and the wife had to be happy with her life. She had to learn to stop asking for so much. "The Fisherman and His Wife" taught a very good lesson.