Jangles: A Big Fish Story

Gr 2-4–Shannon reinvents the “big fish story” with this creepy tall tale, framed as a story the narrator’s father told him about “the biggest fish anyone had ever seen.” “Jangles was so big he ate eagles…,” but not kids. One day, as a child, he drifted out and reeled in Jangles, who pulled him to the bottom of the lake and told him stories. When they came to the surface, he snared the giant fish with his line. Jangles upbraided him for his ungratefulness, and the boy released him, removing the lures as penance. The story ends with an image of the tackle box full of them. The illustrations are full-bleed spreads in dark shades of green, brown, and blue. Jangles is so huge that he runs off the pages, and his lures-covered underbite and mean yellow eye are distinctly scary.  Shannon’s people have the rounded faces and bulging eyes found in The Rain Came Down (Scholastic, 2000), and are reminiscent of the creepy computer animated baby that went viral in the 1990s. The story is predictable, short on plot, and heavy on exclamation points. The narrator’s sudden ability to breathe underwater is more jarring than Jangles’s ability to talk, and the fish’s capture feels mean-spirited, leading to a didactic ending.–Amy Lilien-Harper, The Ferguson Library, Stamford, CT