Gone Fishing: A Novel in Verse by Tamera Will Wissinger (review)

Narrator Sam is looking forward to a day out on the lake, just himself, his dad, and lots of hungry, gullible fish. No such luck: his younger sister, Lucy, talks Dad into taking her along and packs up enough inappropriate gear for an extended vacation. Any kid who's read a lighthearted family novel will see what's coming: it's noisy Lucy who gets the first bite and who scores the biggest haul, with Sam coming second with one good sized catfish (Dad leaves empty-handed). Sam pulls through his jealous funk, though, when Lucy takes her own accomplishment with admirable nonchalance, saving her excitement for describing to the family back home how hard Sam fought to land his catfish. The trajectory may be predictable, but the format is less conventional: all of Sam's episodes take the form of poems, each discreetly labeled by its poetic form, which is then defined at the end of the book. The poems are accessible by title (in a table of contents that suggests encouragingly tiny chapters), and they are cross referenced with other similarly constructed pieces in the separately alphabetized lists of poetry techniques and forms: "HYPERBOLE . . . In 'Can't Go Fishing Yet Blues,' 'Lucy is the slowpoke of the year' is hyperbole. It also occurs in 'Fish Tales' when Sam says his fish 'must've weighed a ton.'" An occasional conundrum in the back matter may send classroom readers scurrying for explanation (why is the limerick also a cinquain, and why isn't it labeled as such?), but most will just enjoy the notion that there are as many ways to tell a tale as to catch a fish. Plenty of cartoony graytone line and watercolor artwork embellishes the text, and a bibliography of poetry books and websites (with one stray fishing book) is appended.