Anglerfish The Seadevil of the Deep, fun STEM for one and all

Fish aren’t inherently evil or bad. However, if you were to pose the question of what’s the evilest fish of them all then the Anglerfish would surely be in that mix. If nothing else, then that glowing light that’s on the end of the fishing rod on their head would qualify them by some people’s classification. If you didn’t know what an Anglerfish was before, then that description certainly painted exactly which fish we’re talking about. Anglerfish, The Seadevil of the Deep is an illustrated book by Elaine M. Alexander with illustrations by Fiona Fogg. This is on the STEM side of illustrated books and presents this mysterious fish in a way that will entertain, make kids curious, and drop little nuggets of knowledge that they’ll gleefully share with their friends.

To be fair, The Seadevil of the Deep introduced me to several facts that I didn’t know about the dangling headlight fish of death. Because the Anglerfish lives in the midnight zone (thank you very much Aquanauts), most of the book takes place amongst a jet-black background. There are varying shades of black with a couple of critters that live down there with our razor-toothed friend. You’ll be able to see the light emitting from its head, illuminating the Anglerfish’s body and are just around it, but not much more.

They didn’t start out this dark. They used to float on the surface, eating plankton and trying not to get die by the thousands of possible ways it could happen there. Fishing nets, any one of the fish that live in the sunlight zone or washing ashore on a rock are just a couple of ways that they fear when they’re young.

After they’re about three years old, if they make it that far, their torso rounds out, the fishing pole on their head sprouts and she descends. She’ll see the Monkfish, an equally distinctive green relative of theirs as continue their downward spiral. Her dark skin helps camouflage herself from the decreasing amount of predators in her race to the bottom.

Once she gets there she’ll bury herself in the sand with her light poking up. It truly is a light at the end of a tunnel, but a tunnel that others don’t want to visit because their curiosity will result in certain death. Her jaws are massive, her teeth are sharp and the fact that she doesn’t have to move much allows her to conserve energy. The only thing down this far that she doesn’t intentionally eat are the male Anglerfish, who are about 1/15 to 1/10 their size.

The male Anglerfish will bite the female and hitch a ride as she cruises along the bottom. A couple of males might even chomp on board. However, this too is a one-way trip because once the males bite into the females their jaws are slowly dissolved into the skin of the female. It couldn’t leave even if it wanted to. His enzymes go into her blood and when she’s ready she’ll release thousands of eggs that have already been fertilized by the now symbiotic male.

Cool. That factoid is worth the price of admission alone. You can almost see elementary school kids lining up to see who can be the first to share that nugget with their classmates. “Did you know……” and then the one who is first to tell the tale will see trivial bits. The Seadevil of the Deep has a title that hooks in those readers too. From the contrasting colors to the massive female’s teeth, the tiny male Anglerfish and the blinding light emitted from the female it’s an illustrated book that works on many levels. If you’re reading it to younger kids the builds to a natural tension as the male attach itself to the female’s body. If kids are reading it themselves then they’ll spend time getting lost in the illustrations, touching the impossible blackness of the midnight zone and wondering what it would be like to be that deep. This is smart STEM stuff that demos as low at early elementary but is educational enough to fill those lower middle school kids with wonder.

Anglerfish The Seadevil of the Deep is by Elaine M. Alexander with illustrations by Fiona Fogg and is available on Candlewick Press.

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