Review of Fee Fie Foe Fish

[Diana Lowery]

[Following is an official OnlineBookClub.org review of "Fee Fie Foe Fish" by Kenneth Anderson.]

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5 out of 5 stars

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This is brilliant. I wish I had found this book when I was trying to instill a passion for words in my high school English students. They would have loved to have seen Fee Fie Foe Fish: The F Word Story on their required reading list. Kenneth Anderson's goal for publishing this book was to urge writers to "not seek to sound intellectual but seek to be understood."

Anderson challenged himself to write a book using only one-syllable words that begin with the letter "F." Miraculously, he accomplished that feat. His story has characters named Finn and Fred and descriptive scenes of fishing. There are conflicts, a climax, and a resolution where the family flies a French flag.

I appreciate that the author decided to add illustrations to his tale. Even though the drawings are simple, black-and-white ones, they do increase the comprehension of the story. At times, the narrative takes on a Dr. Seuss feeling with lines such as "FAY FRYS FRED'S FISH FOR FINNS. FAY FLAYS FISH, FLINTS FIRE, FRYS FIRM FLESH."

I also appreciate that Anderson added a glossary at the end of his book where he defines words such as firth, fop, fugues, and furze for those who are unable to use the context clues from the story for understanding. Because of the simplistic nature of the sentence structure and the all-upper-case letter font, trying to look for grammar errors was an impossible task; therefore, I deem the book error-free.

As terrific as this book is, I am not sure of its marketability. Aside from being used to inspire reluctant ninth graders, I can't think of any other audience for Fee Fie Foe Fish. My rating is, however, five out of five because I enjoyed my time spent reading the book. I don't know if the author has plans for creating a series using other letters of the alphabet, but choosing the f-word for his first book was clever.

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Fee Fie Foe Fish
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