Interesting thoughts about the MEANING OF IT ALL BEYOND SPAWNING but ultimately a bit dull.

Salmon have many hard life decisions to make.
Or... perhaps this is some sort of crazy metaphor for all the hard life decisions people have to make! Oh no!

I love the oddball graphic novels that I find at my library. I'm not always willing to commit to yet another series but I'll pick up a stand alone book in a heartbeat. Salmon Doubts by Adam Sacks is one of my latest impulse picks.

Salmon Doubts follows a school of salmon from hatching through spawning. As they grow up and form friendships one fish decides to question the purpose of life. He follows his own path, constantly questioning the accepted norms of salmon life.

It's a short but thought provoking graphic novel. The salmon aren't anthropomorphized at all. Nor is their life cycle cheered up any. If you know salmon you know they die right after spawning. So along with the inevitability of life and death comes the message of life choices.

They do all look alike. Henry, tho', is the doofus salmon, while his friend, Geoff, swims his own course. They run up against Louis, the lead salmon, and Henry tries to make time with Samantha. It turns out that Henry's sperm is as much a doofus as he is. Heh!

Salmon Doubts, you were fine, I didn't hate you. But I wanted to learn about salmon, and not about men (and ladies I guess) in general. Silly me, wanting to get educated. But it looked good, it's true. Just in the grand scheme of this comix binge it was a weaker one.

I didn't think that a book about the life cycle of salmon would manage to eek any emotion out of me but the drawings are so stark and the meaning of the salmon life so pointless that this story manages to tug out melancholy from the array of emotive possibilities. I think I'd prefer a fanfiction account of Geoff's oceanic life but am still impressed that Sacks could provoke thought via salmon.

I thought it would be a fun optional book to support a salmon unit, that would appeal to a diverse audience...but then it used the word "retarded" and well...no.

Nothing special other than nice art.

I read the whole thing while Charles was going to the gas station. I felt different from when he left!

A funny (but also a little sad) short about the simple lives of salmon.

A sweet but inconsequential graphic novel about the life cycle of the salmon.

OPL 2021 Reading Challenge - Read a Book about Animals