A Good Day's Fishing

I read this book in the book store and decided this was the book I needed to purchase for our son to read to his son. They enjoy fishing on any free day during the summer and this book provides our grandson some good knowledge of fish and equipment.

Prosek's beautiful watercolors augment a whimsical tour through the fisherman's tackle box. Each piece of hardware and lure is considered in relation to the sort of fish it is designed to catch. The store culminates in finding the lucky talisman familiar to most fishermen, a lucky hat. I enjoyed reading this to my six-year-old son who exclaimed at the end of the story, "I can't wait for us to go fishing again." That's a sentiment sure to warm the heart of any father looking to get his child excited about the sport he enjoys.

I've always suspected that fishing's allure has a lot to do with the stories that inevitably come from each outing. This handsome picture book is a delight and would be a fine gift for a fisherman of ANY age, up to about 100 years old, I suspect. It introduces the reader to the magical secret world of lures, bobbers, other equipment that allow the wily fisherman to prevail over his hapless object of attention. It draws the reader back to the page, like the fisherman is drawn back to the stream where success was so close, and opens up the possibilities of "next time" and "maybe tomorrow" for fishers of all ages.

I am a librarian who loves the vast variety of humankind. I love knowing that when I walk down the street I could easily be walking past the greatest parachutist or professional kite flyer in the world, and I would never know. The hobbies and talents of the people of this world takes my breath away. Which makes reviewing a title like, "A Good Day's Fishing" an incredibly complex arrangement. First of all, I have never fished. Not a day of my life. This isn't because I dislike fishing or find it disgusting in some way. I've just never been a situation where someone handed me a pole and a tackle box and said, "Let's catch a few" (or words to that extent). Like many people I've flipped past fishing shows on PBS on cloudy Sunday afternoons and idly wondered who watches that stuff. But I have every respect for the people who enjoy the sport. Author James Prosek enjoys the sport. He enjoys it so much that he's written and illustrated multiple texts on trout, fly fishing, and other such topics. He's sort of the author/illustrator prodigy of the fish world. And now, at the grand old age of 29, he's switched his focus to children's books. No matter how big an author, no matter what their specialty, sooner or later everyone tries to write a book for kids. And that's where I come in. Looking "A Good Day's Fishing" over, I was baffled. As I've mentioned, I'm not exactly experienced in the hobby. I mean, I really enjoyed the recent children's book by Cynthia DeFelice, "The Missing Manatee", that outlines fishing in great exciting detail. But a picture book that simply catalogues the things you need to catch yourself a crappie or a pumpkinseed sunfish.... let's just say that there's a very specific type of child that's going to find this book enthralling. Now the book follows a kid as he goes through his tackle box and tells the reader that, "what I need for a good day's fishing is in here somewhere!". We look at various lures and the fish each one is adept at catching. There are spinners for yellow perch and bobbers and sinkers to catch carp. We see extra line and a wide range of hooks (which, the hero notes, are cool) alongside forgotten maggoty sandwiches (my favorite part, actually) and a stray eel. There are rods and plugs and flies and lures. And finally, "my hat", which ends the text. We are then treated to a large lure and fly glossary that tells you absolutely every last little thing you ever needed to know about the equipment listed in the book. This kind of book is so specialized that I cannot really recommend it to anyone who ISN'T downright fascinated by fishing. But if your child leaps at the chance of standing alongside large bodies of water with their own little tacklebox, then I can think of no book better than this one. Admittedly, I'm a little baffled as to why this book got on the New York Public Library's 2004 100 Books to Remember list. It's too specific to please a great many people (and frankly, if you're