Review: There's Even A Talking Fish
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 10 14, 2013
The Lollipop carries on where Firebird ended and we find ourselves again in Julia Gousseva's wonderful world of stories within stories. Here, Alex, 10, and his sister Katie, 9, discover that they have the power to create stories themselves and not only that, to change the endings, even change history, depending on their own actions. Is it magic or something more subtle and esoteric?What Ms Gousseva is doing is providing morality tales wrapped in the magician's cloak of fairy tales and building an invisible bridge from the cold steppes of her own Russian childhood to the warm deserts of Arizona, her new home and that of her children.This time, we are treated to a talking fish who grants the shocked angler, Emelya, three wishes if he is let off the hook. The wishes granted, Emelya finds himself falling in love with Maria - the Tsar's daughter and winding up in prison. As Alex and Katie get drawn into the narrative, they discover that they have the power to become part of the story and save Emelya - and in ways that teens and pre-teens will find as thoroughly intriguing as I did.