Too Crowded: A Funny Book About Home, Not Fish Care
- Feb 20
- 4 min read
Spoiler alert: Too Crowded is a funny book about a pet fish who lives in a fishbowl—but this picture book will NOT teach kids how to properly care for their first (or fifth) fish.
If you use this book as a fish care manual, there will be casualties. Many.
This book will not teach your child how to care for any pet—not even a turtle. That’s not what Too Crowded is about.
I have received a few emails over the years from well intentioned animal lovers who were worried that Too Crowded is sending the wrong message to kids about goldfish care. I would like to refer those kind hearted souls to the above disclaimers and remind them that kids are much smarter than most adults give them credit for. They understand metaphor, and humor, and that goldfish don't actually wear tiny tennis shoes and leave their fishbowls with mini suitcases, but that it's really fun to imagine them doing so.
Too Crowded WAS, however, inspired by a real tragedy caused by my own ignorance. I am going to share that story with you. Mistakes were made. Many mistakes. I hope you might learn from my mistakes.
The Real Inspiration Behind Too Crowded
This book was inspired by our own dear fish and the tragedy that befell them at the hands of our naivety… at the tragedy that befell Thomas the betta fish, a snail named The Engine that Little Could, a second snail (Engine II), and a frog. New pet owners, don’t make the same mistake I did. There is a whole slew of helpful and not so helpful information about keeping fish responsibly on the internet. I will link to some of that helpful information below. I am not qualified to chime in, but I have learned the hard way that:
Fish, even Betta fish, need much more space than a tiny fish bowl
Fish require well-balanced, clean water and this is harder to achieve than you think
Some fish eat snails
Do your research or just get a pet rock instead.
The snails were to help keep the bowl clean (at the recommendation of the Pet store guy). The first snail disappeared. Presumably, he knew a dangerous situation when he saw one and high tailed it out of the there. Thomas ATE the second snail. Hmmmm… what really happened to the first snail? And the poor frog got the fish sick. That concluded our little fishbowl experiment. After some tears (mostly mine) and many hours of searching “easiest pet for kids to take care of,” we got a pet rock. I can’t recommend a pet rock enough as a first pet. If you are an experienced fish caregiver, you’re probably observing that we made every mistake in the book. If you’re not, I encourage you to do much more research than we did before subjecting any more fish to this fate.
A fishbowl is a sensitive ecosystem and so are our kids' lives.
A fishbowl is such a sensitive ecosystem, but then again, so are the little worlds that our kids live in. One little change, a change in volume, temperature, a new friend, can dramatically affect our perceived experience. Too Crowded is about noticing what makes a habitat comfortable to us and putting words to those feelings. Sometimes a space can just be too… too loud, too cold, too overwhelming, too small, too dirty, or too crowded. If we know how to name those feelings, we can advocate for ourselves and start to figure out what we really need to change.
One little change can affect our kids' ecosystems.
A household can sometimes feel like a fishbowl. One little change can affect the entire household… why am I feeling angsty all of the sudden? Oh, someone turned loud music on. Why is the mood suddenly bad in here? Oh, someone got hungry and forgot to eat. Why does it suddenly smell bad. Oh, someone farted. You get the picture.
Too Crowded is not just a funny book about fish. It's about helping kids name how their environment makes them feel.
If you want to read a funny book to your kids about noticing how our environment affects us and about how sometimes just having the right buddy makes everything OK, then Too Crowded is for you. If you are a little bit weird, if you don’t want to read a novel to your kids at bedtime, if you like cartoons and fish out of water stories (literally)… then Too Crowded is for you. I hope you like it and I hope you take good care of your fish or pet rock or whatever pet you decide on.
Read a STARRED review by Kirkus
You can ask your favorite independent bookseller to order you a copy or you can get one at:
Let me know if you like it by leaving me a review.
If you are looking for information on how to care for your very first fish, start by checking out these sites:
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