#the lampfish of twill

[ilikereadingactually]

Reread Time: The Lampfish of Twill

i wish i had done a better job taking this photo, whoopsies. but it's time for a reread review! a few months ago i grabbed this one from my parents' house and had it sitting next to my bed waiting for the right day, and then i read the sad news that Janet Taylor Lisle had passed. if you had asked me as a child who my favorite authors were, she would definitely have made the list, even though i could not tell you now what any of her books were about, including this one! i have such a fond feeling about it, even this very 1993 cover, but i went in with no idea how it was going to hold up or what was going to happen.

i wept! i was not expecting this book to be a really gentle meditation on the cycle of life and grieving and letting go, but maybe it explains something about me that i loved it at age 11. i was delighted by main character Eric, his eagerness and his fears and the way he learns to see the world differently, and got a kick out of old Zeke who everyone thinks is mad, and i honestly adored gruff but devoted Aunt Opal and her best friend Mrs. Holly (who were definitely an item, right? unmarried aunt and widowed neighbor living hard lives in a dreary fishing town plagued by terrible storms, who are constantly together or talking about each other? they might as well combine households, they'd be warmer at night.) and i have to give an honorable mention to Gully the seagull, the source of all my weeping.

and the gorgeous illustrations by Wendy Anderson Halperin!! i did not remember that this book was illustrated. this was my favorite one, revealing to me the source of my long-held desire for clouds to actually be huge fish:

this was a great reread, and was definitely the right book to pick out of my childhood collection to memorialize Janet Taylor Lisle.

the deets

how i read it: i read my slightly beat up copy, pictured, probably from a book fair or one of those catalogs they used to send us home with, curled up cozy in my bed.

try this if you: love bittersweet stories, dig a magical journey and especially magical fish, enjoy timeless-feeling lit, have feelings about hardscrabble fishing communities, or know a kid in the 8-12 range who would enjoy those things.

a line i really liked: just such beautiful insight

So long ago did this seem now that Eric could barely remember it, and even his parents' faces had become vague moons in his mind, though he would never admit this to anyone. Only his memory of the first blind terror of losing them traveled with him through the years, making him a careful person, a boy who'd rather rely on himself than the plans and promises of others.