Sometimes, no matter how hard we try, everything goes wrong. That is, despite concerted and multiple attempts to achieve a life goal, we fail. Sometimes that failure is temporary. Sometimes it is permanent. Even a long delay in achieving a life goal that is eventually attained is a kind of failure. Justice delayed is justice denied. Learning to walk or talk at age twenty is very different from achieving those milestones at age one or two. Getting a first job right after graduation is different from getting your first job ten years later. Having your first child at age forty is different from having your first child in your twenties. Achieving any goal very late or not at all is something we are often not allowed to mourn. Children have been raised on The Little Engine that Could.
Sometimes when we fall short of success, we need the time, the space and the emotional permission to mourn a failed goal post. The Little Boy Who Didn’t Catch a Fish is a book that both children and adults can use to help cope with not getting what we want when want it, despite trying really, really hard.
Told as the story of one little boy, The Little Boy Who Didn’t Catch a Fish introduces the reader to a happy little family: Patrick, the father, Mattie, the mother, Sissy the sister, and Ben, our protagonist.
Ben has a good relationship with his parents, and a normal rivalry with his sister, but despite his best efforts, he never succeeds in catching a fish that summer.
Ben’s mother Mattie does the one thing that makes it all better: she understands that even though there will be other summers and other opportunities, Ben needs to mourn what might have happened that summer, but didn’t. She gives him permission to be a little sad. Sometimes that’s all we need to get over the fact that a success that is within reach of everyone else is somehow not destined to be ours.
Lavishly illustrated with full color drawings, The Little Boy Who Didn’t Catch a Fish would make a thoughtful gift to any adult or child who is currently experiencing a goal deferred. It’s okay not to succeed, the book says, and it is okay to forgive yourself for feeling sad about not succeeding. It is not envious to be sad that you, unlike everyone else, have to wait a lot longer to achieve the same goal. It is not wrong to need to take a little time to mourn what might have been. Not everyone has to cope with this kind of disappointment. Very few people know what to say when this happens to us. But Mattie and Ben can help. They know what you are going through.
