SASHIMI AND THE FIELD TRIP OF DOOM

A fish boy gets lost on a field trip.

As he and his classmates tour Olde Town Barnacle Bay, Sashimi cracks jokes and makes fart noises with his sopping wet shoes (he’s half fish and has to stay damp, after all). Fed up, his teacher sends him back to the bus. But he boards the wrong vehicle: It’s air-conditioned, the students who eventually join him are wearing uniforms, and there’s a bald-headed boy who looks suspiciously like him (Sashimi has a bright-orange hairless fish face) staring him down. These upper-crust elementary schoolers spot the odd fish-boy out—“EWWWW!” “He’s poor!”—and abandon him by the roadside. Thankfully, Sashimi’s classmates launch a rescue mission. Somewhere in the hullabaloo, Sashimi licks a slug, sending him on a psychedelic trip; here, the art inventively shifts to a series of photos depicting felt versions of the book’s characters. Absurd action sequences and goofiness perfectly pitched to tween sensibilities run the show here, but the series’ story arc advances cleverly, too. Barnacle Bay’s mysteries deepen, Sashimi gets an important clue about the legendary beast that supposedly lurks in the nearby waters (and potentially his own origins), and his friendships—even with his stiff-lipped field-trip partner, Chloe—are strengthened. Santat’s cartooning remains effortlessly ebullient, keeping readers turning pages at a breakneck speed. Human characters vary in skin tone.

Laugh-out-loud humor, a thickening plot, and an unforgettable leading man—this playful series just gets better and better.