LitPick Review
Bucket of Fish is a book about Walter Jenkins and his best friend George Bailey. They are normal kids for 1934; they struggle to get by on the little money they have. As such, Walter fishes as much as he can so that his family doesn’t have to buy food. It is on one such occasion that he is coming back with tons of fish. On his way home, he passes by a dumpster and sees a pair of nice new shoes. Wondering why someone would throw them out, he tries to pick them up and bring them with him, but he stops short. They are still attached to a person, and not just any person, a dead one! He runs all the way home, dropping his bucket of fish before he leaves.
He comes back the next day and finds his bucket gone—his bucket with his initials on it! With the help of his friend George Bailey, he hopes to find out who the murderer is before the killer strikes again. Will the two heroes discover the murderer’s identity? And even if they do, will they be able to tell anyone about it before the murderer finds them?
Opinion:
While this book had loads of potential, I didn't find it to be my cup of tea. Some of the things I didn’t like about it were the tendency to become flat and toneless, for example, “GB stopped over at my house after his paper route. We sat in my bedroom. Gus was working at Fish-ON!” Also, I found at least one case of (at least how I interpreted it) Walter saying something in his head, yet it seemed to be part of the conversation he was having with other people. It would have been nice if the characters had been fleshed out some more; I couldn’t picture them in my mind as well as I would’ve hoped.
On the bright side, there was a bit of a mystery element that I did enjoy. And the theme of friendship and being there for one another was another strong positive element. Overall, it did have a lot of promise, but it fell short of its mark.
