Wonderfully whimsical and gently profound.
Most people would say Jonah Hutchins lets his imagination run wild. Being described as a weird kid isn’t entirely inaccurate, but Jonah would argue that he is simply better at seeing the unseen. The spicy neighborhood harpy he knows by name? As real as a librarian with supersonic hearing. His basement troll? Large and in charge of his fashion sense. So Jonah doesn’t find it at all out of the ordinary when a fierce storm fills his backyard with trampled plants, impossibly deep puddles, and a talking salmon named Stuart. Stuart is a pleasant enough fish, but he comes with grave news of a less amiable visitor than himself. Before Jonah can figure out exactly what is lurking in the puddle’s depths, his parents accidentally step into the murky water and are gobbled up by a decidedly unpleasant beast. What is a teenage boy to do when his parents have been swallowed into another dimension? For Jonah, the answer is easy: assemble the oddest team of travelers and wade into interdimensional waters to find his parents. But the beast that ate Jonah’s parents is actually a formidable demon with quite an appetite. The travelers will need help if they hope to conquer an evil that poses a threat in every dimension.
If you’ve ever wanted to meet the king and queen of Toy Land, enjoy a tea party with friends who drink imagination and eat wonder for breakfast, hitch a ride on the back of an affectionate dragon, or tour an impressive castle built from Lincoln Logs, Legos, and #2 pencils, then you’ll revel in Byron Leavitt’s fanciful tale. Perfect for middle-grade readers, this creative adventure is a lively blend of topsy‑turvy creativity and good‑natured mischief. The prose shifts effortlessly between eloquent and delightfully silly, doubling down on the make-believe aesthetic Leavitt has crafted. Humor is also a constant companion. Whether it’s Jonah’s matter‑of‑fact commentary in the face of the absurd, Stuart’s unexpectedly refined dialect, a perfectly landed in-joke about fish symbols, or a toy soldier addressing Jonah as a “young meat creature,” the book never misses a chance to draw a laugh. And the undercurrent of spirituality makes Leavitt’s book uniquely encouraging. A tale that channels the madcap sparkle of Lewis Carroll and the sturdy spiritual heft of C. S. Lewis, The Fish in Jonah’s Puddle (To Say Nothing of the Demon) is both wonderfully whimsical and gently profound.
