Alan Watts writes a lovely story about a fish who finds himself stuck in quite a dilemma, With strong spiritual undertones, The Fish Who Found the Sea is a beautifully illustrated story with the underlying lesson that one cannot spend life chasing their own happiness, they must let go and exist peacefully in order to see all the greatness that is already present all around them.

Thank you to Netgalley for the opportunity to access this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The Fish Who Found the Sea is about a mixed-up little fish that suddenly finds himself out of sorts, falling and spinning and chasing himself in circles. He feels like it will go on like that forever. Will he find a way to go with the flow again?

This book is gorgeously illustrated with bright colors and has a painting-like quality that I was in awe of. Ocean lovers will especially enjoy the underwater artwork by Khoa Le.
The story is lyrical and makes a good read-aloud. There's also a happy ending!

My little listener enjoyed the art but wasn't very interested in the story. I think this may be because this book is a bit lengthy with small text and has themes that might not be entirely clear to children. There are a lot of intellectually advanced words (like obtruded) and concepts included that I think young readers and listeners will struggle to understand and follow.

I wasn't familiar with the author or this book prior to reading this but have since learned that he brought philosophy and religion to the West in the form of 'zen', or Buddhism, before dying in 1975.

A small treasure.

I have heard of Alan Watts many times in my life but have never been fortunate enough to read a book by him. So when I saw this book, I one-clicked it.

This is a children's book and therefore, very short. It can be read in about 5-7 minutes. But the lesson it contains is a vast one and may require many reads.

The illustrations are top-notch and make the book more accessible.

I adored the book. I recommend it to everyone.

I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley.

"The fish was sure that if he relaxed the chase for a moment he would plunge headlong into the abyss, and so he redoubled his efforts to save himself, in spite of the fact that he became more and more tired and disgusted every minute.

Soon he saw that he was in a hideous dilemma: he must either fall into the abyss or go on chasing his tail. Both alternatives were equally horrifying.

He waved his fins in panic and prepared to die."


This spiritual parable is a wonderful story for older teens and up but I fear the age group that it targets will not work well. The underlying meaning is far too complex for little minds to comprehend. The excerpt from the book that I started with could also be frightening for a young child. The vocabulary in the text is relatively outdated and difficult for kids to understand and do not jive well with the updated, modern, electrical colours of the illustrations. The illustrations on their own are very captivating and well done but do little to enrich the meaning of the text.

The author is recognized as one of the great teacher's of Eastern philosophy to a Western audience. I feel that the philosophical stance presented in this book would be meaningless to this age group. Sorry, but personally I feel that this book will not be a hit with kids and if shared would take a lot of explaining to comprehend the message that the author is trying to convey.

I really enjoyed this! My favourite part of this book was the art and the way the colours were used in the illustrations. I recommend this for readers 4.5+.

I liked the illustrations in this album, and it was they who attracted me to this reading.
But the subject, whatever interesting, is (in my opinion) far too complex for children.
The reading was heavy and too dense ... too bad!

Review to come May 4th on Blog and Goodreads.

I received this book from Netgalley in exchange of an honest review.

How can I resist such a gorgeous cover. I am a cover lover and this book just made me have heart-eyes.

Sadly, I have to say that I didn't enjoy this one as much. This has nothing to do with the art, that one is just absolutely stunning and took me on a trip of its own. But the problem I had was with the words. There are so many of them. A whole block of text with a boring and bland font, tons of words that the tiniest ones probably wouldn't understand and some older ones may also have a hard time with. Really, who thought sentences like: "he whizzed around in circles in frantic pursuit of his own end" or "Still more, the Great Sea always surrounded them in such a way that it bore them up, and made itself transparent so that they could see where they were going and enjoy all the wonders of the deep." and several others, were a good idea? I know there are picture books with more text than normally, but in this case it just didn't fit. And quite often the sentences flow a lot of better in those books. This was at times just too dense. Even I had to re-read sentences as I couldn't believe they were there. You have these gorgeous illustrations and the text is just taking over, it is a big and dense presence.
Not to mention that the story got quite depressing but thankfully picked up later on.

The idea is there, a fish who finds the sea, finds out what swimming is and then a happy ending. The art is there (again stunning). The cover is there as well. But then there are these blocks of text that just drown it all. But one could easily also tell the story, in probably easier words and with less fanciness, by looking at the illustrations.

2 stars for the art and the idea.

"The Fish Who Found the Sea," written by Alan Watts and illustrated by Khoa Le was an interesting "children's book" for an adult. The concepts here would be tough for any child under the age of 13 to grasp. Watts is hailed as one of the great teachers of Eastern philosophy to the Western audience. However, the Eastern philosophy presented in this book would be completely lost on most children. Even the vocabulary contained in this book are far beyond most youngsters. I loved the illustrations presented in this book. There are some lovely underwater, ocean scenes created by Ms. Le.

All in all, this book makes for an interesting read for someone interested in learning more about Eastern philosophy, however, the presentation and format geared toward kids just doesn't work.

I did not love the book, The Fish Who Found the Sea. I thought it was very deep and beyond the children's audience, it is targetting. The wordiness is going to be a problem for many young readers. I read this story with both of my young children, and neither of them made it through the whole book before they had wandered off elsewhere.

The message of the story is also beyond what I feel young readers will be capable of understanding. It is deep and requires an understanding of life that many kids are just not ready for. I teach upper elementary, and I don't think they even would be able to process this story.

The winning characteristic of this story is the pictures. They are beautiful, but they don't aid in the comprehension of the story.

I received an advanced reader copy of this book to read in exchange for an honest review via netgalley and the publishers.

This book is beautifully illustrated but the language used in the story itself was quite grown up and not easy for a child to follow or completely grasp what it means.
The story is a nice story just a little old within the vocabulary for the audience it is aimed at.

A very philosophical young read, and one perhaps not quite balanced enough for the young audience it would get these days, with words like "obtruded". A bright orangey red fish, in the middle of the huge sea, is completely ignorant of what he has and how he has got it, and so gets himself into a right spin in seeking something unnecessary, until the Great Sea reassures him. So is it a metaphor of the rat race, or of self-criticism, or is the Great Sea some kind of God? Apparently this might be older than me, in original text form (the illustrations here, and very nice they are too, are new) – so I won't be the only person to have punned that this is 'deep', much like the sea it's set in. It was perfectly pleasant, but in not nailing down its message I don't think it makes things as clear as they would need to be for the average person that is likely to pick this up and browse based on its visual appeal. Two and a half stars.

"The fish was sure that if he relaxed the chase for a moment he would plunge headlong into the abyss, and so he redoubled his efforts to save himself, in spite of the fact that he became more and more tired and disgusted every minute.

Soon he saw that he was in a hideous dilemma: he must either fall into the abyss or go on chasing his tail. Both alternatives were equally horrifying.

He waved his fins in panic and prepared to die."

This is not a children's book. It's an illustrated spiritual parable for grownups written by an author who really doesn't seem to understand kids if he thinks that they want to read a story about existential terror that uses words like "obtruded". That sound you hear is lots of tiny feet pounding on the floor as they try to escape this so-called children's storybook.

If it were marketed to adults, I wouldn't have a problem with it. But as it's being marketed to kids, I have to take into account its suitability for the age group. The illustrations are lovely... but the text will go so far over kids' heads as to be essentially meaningless. And for those kids who do understand some of it, it could be scary. The author even seems to appeal to the little worrywarts with the following suggestion:

"You know how it is when you start thinking about something you do automatically, such as breathing, or riding a bike: you begin to get confused."

The fish goes on to think he's forgotten how to swim. Just what we need: little kids worrying that they're going to get confused and forget how to breathe.

I'd recommend this to teens and up. It's not a children's book, despite how it's being marketed.

I read the story myself and to a small group of primary-age children. The illustrations were absolutely beautiful and the story had a good message. However, while I understood the point the author was trying to make, it appeared lost on the children. It was a tad heavy, long, and they stopped me constantly to ask what certain words meant. It would really depend on the child/children before recommending this one.

Unfortunately, I did not care for this at all. The storytelling style was just not something that appealed to me. It comes across as very New Age and I honestly didn’t even finish the story.

I’m not even sure why I am posting that I read this book on goodreads

A kids book that had no rhyme or reason at all.

The illustrations were gorgeous.

This book is absolutely beautifully illustrated. The words are also lovely - but that's where the disconnect is. The level for the words and the level for the pictures seem a mismatch - the words of the story are far too heavy and too much for the illustrations held in the story. I received a free ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review from Netgalley.