A surprise ending and an undersea setting update this classic. The only big thing about little Tiddler is his imagination: Each day he dreams up a new tale to explain his tardiness. The other students call him on his outrageous fibs, but Little Johnny Dory loves Tiddler's stories and passes them on to his granny, who then tells them to her friends. But one day Tiddler has a real adventure and gets lost in the big ocean until he overhears a familiar story about the exploits of a fish named Tiddler. He follows his own stories from one sea creature to another, until he is back in familiar waters. And do his classmates believe this tale? Of course not. But Little Johnny Dory does. "He told it to a writer friend . . . who wrote it down for you." Tiddler's underwater world comes to life through Scheffler's highly saturated, detailed illustrations, which give his fish real personality while preserving their resemblance to their natural counterparts. Clever. (Picture book. 3-7)

Although their title implies an aquatic variation of the Aesop fable, Donaldson and Scheffler (creators of <EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">The Gruffalo) turn out a different animal altogether. True, diminutive Tiddler is given to tall tales (“Sorry I'm late... on the way to school I was captured by a squid”). But while no one believes them, his stories save his life when he gets lost: a frightened Tiddler discovers that creatures have been passing on his improbable stories to one another in a kind of chain—and if he follows that chain in reverse, he'll end up right back home. Donaldson's rhyming text is crisp and clean, leaving plenty of metaphorical room for Scheffler's expansively imagined art. Always gifted at conjuring up entire worlds (even his spot illustrations feel animated and lovingly detailed), he creates an ocean effervescent with texture, color and vividly expressive personalities. And Tiddler is an excellent reader surrogate: spunky, wide-eyed and ultimately triumphant. Ages 3–5. <EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">(May)

K-Gr 3 Tiddler is a tiny fish with a propensity for tall tales. Habitually late for school, he offers a different excuse each day. He's been riding a seahorse, got trapped in a treasure chest, was captured by a squid, etc. The other students discount his stories, but Little Johnny Dory loves them and passes them on to his grandmother, who tells a crab, who tells a plaice, and so on. When Tiddler's daydreaming lands him far from home, it is the retracing of the trail of his own stories that leads him back again. The rhyme scheme here isn't precise, but it is reader-friendly, and invites participation: "'Sorry I'm late, Miss. I set off really early,/but on the way to school I was captured by a squid./I wriggled and I struggled till a turtle came and rescued me.'/'Oh no he didn't.' 'OH YES HE DID.'" The title here is a bit misleading as Tiddler doesn't tell his tales to mislead anyone deliberately, as in the original fable. Instead, he resembles Dr. Seuss's Marco from And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street (Random, 1989), whose imagination is similarly bursting at the seams. The colorful, detailed illustrations feature an endearing cast of undersea denizens with the text woven through on clean white space. This would be an engaging book to share when stories have an underwater theme or when discussing how tales proliferate. Grace Oliff, Ann Blanche Smith School, Hillsdale, NJ

Title aside, this picture book is not an homage to Aesop so much as it is a salute to stories and how they travel. Tiddler, a little fish with "plain gray scales," is given to flights of narrative fancy, and while most of his schoolmates do not believe Tiddler's outrageous excuses for his tardiness, his friend Little Johnny Dory likes the tales so much that he tells them to his grandmother, who tells others. A misadventure with a fisherman's net leaves Tiddler "lost in the middle of the ocean," but the frightened fish hears a shoal of anchovies telling his story. The anchovies lead Tiddler to the shrimp who told them the story, the shrimp leads Tiddler to the whale who told her, and so on, until Tiddler follows his own story all the way home. The story has clear parallels to the film Finding Nemo but Donaldson avoids Disney cutesiness in her rhythmic text, and Scheffler creates winsome, expressive cartoon fish in appealing, bright coral-reef colors.

Anyone whose creativity has felt squelched by the moral of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" will welcome the denouement here: the fish hero is rescued by his tale-telling. Released from a fisherman's net in unknown territory, Tiddler retraces the route his own story has taken until he's safely home. Scheffler's comical illustrations in undersea hues reinforce the non-censorious tone.