Read, Play, Blog loves Amphibian

Julie Wilson and Sean Cranbury’s awesome Advent Book Blog dramatically increased my list of books to read this winter. Clare Hitchens recommends Amphibian by Carla Gunn and she is spot on—this is one of my favourite recent reads.

Nine-year-old Phineas William Walsh is too smart for his own good. He can’t sleep at night because a quarter of the world’s mammals are endangered (and he can probably name them all). He’s learned that adults don’t have all the answers, but even when they do, they can’t be trusted. He keeps a list of lies adult tell him (Santa, Tooth Fairy, everything’s going to be OK) and he points out his teacher’s errors in logic (doesn’t she want to know the right answer?) He wants to quit going to school because he’s worried that all the useless, wrong things he’s learning will crowd out the things he needs to know for his future job as a biologist. But first, he will rescue the class pet, a tree frog from Australia cruelly held captive behind glass walls. Phineas exasperates his worried mother who tries her best to provide honest answers (with a little help from Google) and he tries to impress his seldom seen foreign correspondent father with painstakingly crafted letters.

You may compare this book to A Curious Incident of a Dog in the Night-Time if the comparison weren’t so overused. This book’s in a league of its own, and it’s as fresh and charismatic as the wonderful cover suggests.