The Magic Fish

I had to find this book for my own kids since my parents' copy was badly damaged. I have great childhood memories of this book and my daughter loved it by the second reading. "Why?" . . . "Never mind why," said the woman. . . "I don't want to go," . . . "Go," said his wife. The wonderful rhyme and nagging wife make this book a classic. I miss the old pictures but it has the original text which no other version of this Grimm's fairy tale has matched.

This folk tale is unlike most of the storybooks that you'll find marketed towards children. It is much closer to the original grim fairy tales in that it has something of a sense of menace and danger about it, and also lacks the now-requisite happy ending. It tells the story of a fisherman who earns the favor of a magic fish through his own good-heartedness. He has no thought of reward, but his wife convinces him to ask the fish to upgrade their hut to a house, which the fish seems happy to do. But then the wife continues to convince the fisherman to go ask the fish for upgrades, until she is Queen of the land and wants to be Queen of the Sun and the Stars. Every time the fisherman goes to ask the fish for something else, the sea is stormier, although the fish says nothing. In the end, the fish decides that the wife has asked for too much, and takes away everything. There is so much going on in this story that a child can enjoy it for years. The characters and their relationship to each other provide for an instructive discussion about why we do favors, and why we should be reasonable in our requests. It also tells us a lot about what it takes to be happy. The repetitive nature of the plot should also be comforting to children. I really recommend the 1967 edition, which was masterfully illustrated by Ed Arno. The pictures are done in blue and black, with a funky thick-line-drawing style which perfectly captures the mood of each page.

The Magic Fish is a classic fable of greed that all people (not just children!) should read and familiarize themselves with. An old fisherman and his crabby, demanding wife live by the sea. She demands that he go catch some fish, and the fisherman snags a bug-eyed, yellow talking magic fish. The Fish is really a prince, and the fisherman frees him. His wife, angry that he returned empty handed, demands that he go back and demand a pretty house from the fish. Her wish is granted.One can see where this leads to: the wife continually demands more and more wonderful things for herself (is this where the term "fishwife" came from??) until the magic fish becomes angry and takes EVERYTHING back. The fisherman, who meanwhile didn't WANT to keep going back to the magic fish, was perfectly happy with what he already had."The Magic Fish" is a fable that we simply don't hear enough of these days, and I think it would be good if we heard it more often. Our culture is one where we are constantly encouraged to buy, buy, BUY and our spiritual wealth is often judged by our material wealth: more stuff = happiness. The tale of the magic fish, with it's stout, heavy illustrations by Pels, reminds us that sometimes what we HAVE is all that we NEED, and greed comes before a fall. Highly recommended for all ages.

The story in this book is one of the most important because it teaches that we should be grateful for what we have. Gratitude seems to be one of the forgotten virtues of our day. The world would be a much better place if everyone had read Magic Fish.