The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher
Narrated by Andrew Bond
In The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher, Beatrix Potter sends a prim young frog out fishing for his supper guests, with results he never sees coming.
Jeremy lives in a small, damp house at the edge of a pond. When rain sets in, he pulls on his mackintosh and galoshes, pushes off on a lily pad, and rows out to catch minnows for the dinner party he's hosting that evening. Fishing goes badly from the start. A water beetle pinches his toe, and a sharp-spined stickleback wriggles off his hook and stings him on the way. Then something far larger takes an interest — a great trout rises from the depths and swallows Jeremy whole, boots, mackintosh, and all.
He is spat back out almost as quickly, saved only because the trout finds his raincoat disagreeable to the taste. Jeremy swims for shore, minus his galoshes and badly shaken, and hops home to find his friends already waiting. There is no fish for supper after all, but Sir Isaac Newton the newt and Alderman Ptolemy Tortoise make do with what's on hand, while Jeremy nurses his bruises and privately decides his fishing days are over.
It's a small pond-side fable about a cautious creature learning the hard way that the water holds bigger appetites than his own, with the mild scrapes and narrow escapes that run through Potter's animal stories. Fans of Peter Rabbit and her other tales of tidy, easily flustered woodland characters will find the same gentle humor here, and it works well for younger listeners as well as adults who grew up on these stories.
Andrew Bond keeps the pace quiet and unhurried, letting the pond settle and the rain fall at exactly the speed you'd want for drifting off.
