Noodleheads Find Something Fishy by Tedd Arnold, Martha Hamilton, and Mitch Weiss, illustrated by Tedd Arnold

Danielle Jones is a youth and teen librarian in Portland, Oregon. She has served on the 2018 Sibert Committee and the 2016 ALSC Notable Children’s Books Committee.

Book cover of Noodleheads Find Something Fishy
by Tedd Arnold, Martha Hamilton, and Mitche Weiss,
 illus. by Tedd Arnold

The team that brought us last year’s 2018 Geisel Honor Noodleheads See the Future have joined up again to bring us a third book in their Noodleheads series. Paying homage to folklore’s noodlehead stories, this Holiday House publication written by Tedd Arnold, Martha Hamilton, and Mitch Weiss, and illustrated by Tedd Arnold, delivers the same great humor and storytelling as its predecessors.

In this early reader graphic novel Mom Noodlehead wants to get the Noodlehead brothers, Mac and Mac, out of the house. Giving them a snack and a coin each, she sends them out to the great outdoors in hopes that they will learn something new. Mac and Mac, having found a fishing pole, decide to learn how to catch a fish. Similar to this year’s Vernon is on his Way: Small Stories by Philip C. Stead, fishing in this book also can look very different from what is expected, adding to the humor of the book.

In putting this up to the Geisel criteria, this hits a lot of marks. It has a great story arc that is carried over a series of short, episodic chapters. Both the storytelling and graphic novel paneling offer great pacing and page turns. Bold color illustrations are offset by large speech bubbles, that offer plenty of necessary whitespace for emerging readers. Certain words are in bold to add extra dramatic emphasis that readers will easily pick up on.

I felt that this year’s Noodleheads was making more of a conscientious effort around controlled vocabulary and its use. New words like “rental” and “promise” were repeated, and often on the same double page spread. I also felt that the jokes in this book were more layered, respecting that the reader had enough sophistication to catch the irony.

6 panels showing the Noodleheads buying worms from Miss Froggy's Bait Shop

Though this wouldn’t necessarily be a consideration for the Geisel committee, as an adult reader sharing stories with children, I appreciated the authors’ note where they break down the etymology of each Noodlehead story element and its cultural background. What seems like effortless storytelling actually stems from a rigorous of study of noodlehead and noodlehead-type stories from all over the world.

One concern I have is the portrayal of Mom Noodlehead in her 1950’s-esque dress and house apron. It felt very gendered and antiquated in a story that I felt was set in a more contemporary world.

For the most part, this is a strong contender for the Geisel committee, and though we won’t know for sure, I wouldn’t be surprised for it to at least make to the table for discussion in Seattle come January.