Book: Fire Pie Trout
Author: Melanie Mosher
Illustrator: Renné Benoit
Publisher: Fifth House Publishers
Date: May 20, 2014
Genre: picture book; gr 1-2; age 6-7
Pages: 32
Price: $19.95
My rating: an believable true-to-life story

Fire Pie Trout by Melanie Mosher is a wonderful maritime story, another book I purchased at the children’s book fair in 2016.

It’s early morning before the fog is all burned off and little Grace and her grandfather are going fishing. Grace packed their favourite lunch for them – pizza, which her grampie calls fire pie.

This is a realistic story that shows Grace trying to keep up with her grandfather’s long strides. The grass is slippery and wet in the fog, and Grace ends up slipping and falling, so she just rolls down the hill and waits for her grampie.

Gramps shows Grace how to fish, then sits on the bank and lowers his own line into the water. Grace doesn’t want to bait her hook with a worm, so she releases the worm into the grass when her grampie isn’t looking. She begins to worry to her grandfather that maybe she is too young to fish. She’s thinking about it’s being dark, that she’s not allowed to watch scary movies or stay home all alone, so … maybe she is too young to fish, too. Then she secretly releases another worm instead of baiting her hook with it.

In the meantime her grampie has caught two big trout while encouraging her to keep trying. The fog is gone, the sun has warmed them up, and then – after setting free a third worm – Grace has an idea! It involves pizza and Grace realizes she is NOT too young to fish after all.

This is a nicely told true-to-life story with an amusing ending that young readers will enjoy. Some will see themselves in Grace who is a bit nervous, but then discovers how clever she can be.

Fire Pie Trout by Melanie Mosher is a lovely story of a special outing for a grandchild with a loved grandparent. It has beautiful illustrations by Renné Benoit who very effectively captured the look of fog over the water, and the joys of fishing in it.

You can find Fire Pie Trout by Melanie Mosher on my BUY THE BOOK page.

I also post my reviews on Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Chapters.Indigo, and Goodreads.

Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musings!  🙂