Fish Books

You may have noticed we’ve been doing quite a few fish activities lately. While we’ve been crafting, we’ve also been doing a lot of reading for our fish theme. Here are some of our favorite fish books for kids.

Favorite Fish Books for Kids

Get a full week of fish theme lesson plans for 

Home Preschool or your Preschool Classroom.

The Three Little Fish and the Big Bad Shark is an underwater version of The Three Little Pigs. It has all the components of the traditional tale that kids love with a little twist. My girls never miss a chance to chime in and say, “Not by the skin of my finny fin fin!”

This is Not My Hat is the followup tale to I Want My Hat Back. Except this story is narrated by the thief, a small fish who took a hat from a big fish.  My kids love the humor woven into this tale.

Little White Fish is the first in a series of books. In this first book Little White Fish is crying because it can’t mommy. As it looks kids explore the colors of the rainbow and meet a variety of sea creatures.

Big Fish Little Fish introduces preschoolers to opposites through playful rhyming text.

McElligot’s Pool is a classic Dr. Seuss book. As Marco is fishing in McElligot’s tiny pool, he’s daydreaming of all the fantastic things that might be caught. It’s a wonderful story of patience and optimism.

Ten Little Fish is an underwater counting book that invites kids to countdown from ten to one. In addition to counting, the rhyming text provides many opportunities to discuss rhyming words.

Memoirs of a Goldfish is a tale about a goldfish who is very happy with his solitary life. Soon his fishbowl becomes home to a whole series of new intruders, and he’s not thrilled about it…at first.

Swim! Swim! is a book my girls choose from our bookshelf at least once a week. In the story Lerch is looking for a friend, and along the way he’s quite sad as he gets no response from the nonliving things in the aquarium he shares. His responses are  It is  fantastic for practicing and modeling voice.

Trout, Trout, Trout A Fish Chant -Join along  as the author and illustrator share a rhythmic chant about the many unique kinds of freshwater fish found in the United States and Canada. Kids won’t believe fish like these really exist until they get to the end and read a brief description about each of the fish in the book.

Swimmy in this popular story by Leo Lionni small fish work together to overcome their fears.

In Fish Eyes the narrator wishes to become a fish and then shares what he’d see in this counting picture book.

Sad and lonely Big Al has no friends because of his appearance. One day he hsaves all the little fish by ripping a hole in a fisherman’s net where they had been trapped. With one look at Big Al the fisherman through him back in the sea and soon Big Al had many friends who all learned an important lesson.

The Rainbow Fish is another popular children’s book read in classrooms all over. It’s a story of sharing and friendship.

In You Be You Adri notices that all fish are different while swimming through the sea . Along the way kids will learn some about opposites and the important observation that we are all unique.

In A Fish Out of Water a little boy gets a tiny fish for a pet, but he’s warned to only feed it a tiny dot of food or something may happen. But Otto seemed unhappy so the boy gave him all the food in the box, and Otto grew and grew and grew. He grew so much that the boy didn’t know what to do with him, so he has to call Mr. Carp to come help.

In Sophie’s Fish Jake is very worried about watching Sophie’s pet fish for the weekend. He agonizes over not knowing what to do or how to take care of the fish. When Sophie arrives he’s feeling better about taking care of the fish until he finally meets Yo-Yo.

In Fish Had a Wish Fish shares about all the animals he would like to be and why, but in the end fish is happy to be a fish.

Paul Meets Bernadette-Before meeting Bernadette Paul swam circles around and around in his fish bowl. But Bernadette shows him that there’s a whole world outside the fish bowl. Kids will love the fish’s interpretation of the “city” outside their home.

In Pattern Fish kids have the opportunity to view many different patterns on each page. Through the text they can also participate in verbal patterns (chomp-chomp-munch-munch).

I am a Fish: The life of a Clown Fish is narrated by a clown fish. This nonfiction text tells some of the basic facts about clown fish and its home the anemone.

What’s it Like to  be a Fish? tells about where fish live. It also provides examples about the human body and how it is designed for life on land and how fish are adapted for life underwater.

Did we miss any of your favorites? I’d love to know about them. Leave a comment!

Get a Full Week of Fish Theme Learning and Play

Save time and get right to the playful learning with our printable lesson plan sets. Each set includes over 30 playful learning activities related to the theme, and we’ve provided different versions for home preschool families and classroom teachers so all activities are geared directly toward your needs.

This set includes active hands-on learning ideas and the following printables:

1) 1-15 Fish and Fish Bowl Counting Mats
2) Uppercase Letter Fish Cards
3) Lowercase Letter Bubble Cards
4) 0-31 Fish Number Cards
5) Fish Patterning and Sorting Cards
6) Fish Roll and Graph Math Game
7) Word Segmenting Fish
8) Shape Fish
9) Fish Word Building Mats
10) Fish Size Ordering and Sorting Cards

Get Your Lesson Plans

Home Preschool Fish Theme Lesson Plans

Preschool Classroom Fish Theme Lesson Plans

Fish Activities to Go Along with Your Reading

Fish Play Dough

Potato Masher Fish Craft

Fork Painted Fish Craft

More Resources for Little Book Lovers

The best way to encourage a love of reading is to provide kids with many opportunities to engage with a wide variety of books that are of interest to them. That’s why we share so many books lists on Fantastic Fun and Learning. We want to make it easy for you to find great books your kids will love. Over the years we’ve also discovered some helpful tools for connecting kids and books.

Digital libraries are one very handy way to do this. Epic! is one of our favorite online libraries. It’s full of over 25,000 books, learning videos, quizzes and more for kids 12 and under…and it’s free for educators. Click here to learn more and sign up.

Book Boxes are another fun way to get kids excited about reading. What kid doesn’t love to get a special delivery in the mail?! The crew over at Bookroo finds the best little known books that you won’t already have in your library, and they send them to you each month. Take a peak inside a Bookroo Box here.

Book-Based Activities are also a lot of fun for kids. Jodie over at Growing Book by Book has saved us all a ton of time and created a full year of Book-Based Activity Calendars so that you can extend the fun with a special book each week.

Originally published June 2014. Updated June 2019.