STEVE, TERROR OF THE SEAS

When Steve the fish swims up, all
the other denizens of the sea dart off at top speed. How come?

“Finding love has been a challenge,”
Steve admits, but otherwise he doesn’t mind that smaller fish, bigger
fish, even jellyfish and octopuses—not to mention human swimmers—retreat in
terror at the sight of him. Depicted as a relatively diminutive blue-and-white–striped
fish with mild-mannered pop-eyes, Steve is (or at least pretends to be) mildly
puzzled, as compared to pufferfish, viperfish, and other toothier, spikier, or
rather ugly denizens of the deep (“let’s not forget the BLOBFISH”), he’s
not really very scary looking. For readers who aren’t all that up on marine
biology Brewis inserts big fins or elongated stretches of gray along the edges
of her cartoon illustrations…culminating at last in Steve’s introduction of his
best friend, George, a humongous, spread-filling, blue and gray shark who
disingenuously chortles, “Hey, Steve, don’t scare the fishies!” A brief “True
Part” follows, revealing that Steve is a pilot fish, expanding on the “mutualistic
relationship” between pilot fish and sharks and explaining, probably
gratuitously, that “pilot fish are not really scary at all.” The illustrations
are unsurprisingly dominated by washes of blue, translucent layers of darker
blue, yellow, green, and the occasional red delineating other ocean animals.