I Am Not a Fish!, by Peter Raymundo

Every so often, I’m just minding my own business reading a picture book… when I am ATTACKED.

Today, it was Peter Raymundo’s I Am Not a Fish!, in which Edgar the jellyfish goes to group therapy to deal with everyone calling him a fish when he is very much NOT a fish and NOT made of jelly. As he tells his life story to the group, we get lots of Fish Facts, visual and textual jokes, and cameos from various sea creatures.

Slight digression: One of the cameos is by a group of marine angelfish, who look TOTALLY DIFFERENT than freshwater angelfish??? I know this because I briefly fell down an internet rabbithole because… well, sometimes these things just happen. Okay, okay, I looked it up because there’s a page devoted to Edgar trying to bond with the angelfish and the angelfish didn’t look like any angelfish I’d ever seen, so of course I had to look it up because I am pedantic AF and can never let anything go. Lo and behold, I learned all about marine angelfish versus freshwater angelfish, so there you have it & you’re welcome.

Anyway, eventually Edgar decides that it shouldn’t matter what other folks call him because he knows who he is, which is one of those lessons that I have mixed feelings about… because, yes, self-acceptance is great, but people respecting other peoples’ identities is also great?

All of which brings me DIRECTLY—for obvious reasons—to the whole I FEEL ATTACKED thing:

Illustration from I Am Not a Fish! by Peter Raymundo, in which Edgar the jellyfish is saying, “And everyone always says, Edgar, you’re overthinking things.”

Heh. (Don’t tell Josh about this, he’ll start calling me Edgar or something.)