Grande Prairie Daily Herald-Tribune calls Amphibian 'brilliant'

Amphibian by Carla Gunn was one of my favourite books last year. I cried buckets while reading it, mostly because I could relate to the main character and felt that the author did a wonderful job creating his voice.

Phineas Walsh is the nine-year-old narrator of Amphibian. He's a strange but perceptive little kid who loves animals and is obsessed with saving the environment. He's also got a lot of personal challenges; his parents are divorced, his mom has a new boyfriend and he is incredibly anxious, sensitive and worries a lot about the state of the world.

I saw a lot of my childhood self in the character and so this was quite a hard, yet moving book for me to read. This is a brilliant book with a good story and it's a shame that it didn't get a lot of attention when it came out in April 2009. Gunn, who used her children for inspiration while writing this book, should be commended for the way she developed the interplay between an anxious boy and his stressed out but loving mother.