Big Fish is ancient and enormous. Many times in her 177 years she has come close to death - stalked by panners in the gold rush of 1858, nearly crushed in the Hell's Gate rock slide of 1913, almost stranded when the water of Sumas Lake was drained into the river in 1924, and threatened by a mysterious disease that killed many other sturgeon on the early 1990s. Since then, sports fishers have caught her several times, and she has led them quite a chase. But today scientists and many others are trying to help the sturgeon survive. Now, we hope, only old age will claim her when her time comes.

Maggie de Vries's poetic text and Renné Benoit's beautiful illustrations chart nearly two centuries of Fraser River history as they lead young readers into the dangerous and exciting underwater world of Big Fish.

Maggie de Vries is a writer, editor, teacher, and the award-winning author of several children's books, including How Sleep Found Tabitha and Chance and the Butterfly. Her adult nonfiction title Missing Sarah was shortlisted for a Governor General's Award and won the first annual George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in BC Literature for 2004. She lives in Vancouver with her husband and two cats in a house overlooking the Fraser River. She imagines the sturgeon there, deep beneath the surface of the river that she looks at and walks along every day.

Renné Benoit is an award-winning artist who has illustrated many books for children, including Boy in Motion, Jason's Journey and Goodbye to Griffith Street, which won the Christie Harris Illustrated Children's Literature Prize in 2005. She grew up in Nepean, Ontario, and has always loved to draw and paint. She now lives in Southern Ontario with her husband and her two dogs, spending the days (and some evenings) in her home studio. When she's not sitting at her table with paintbrush in hand and a dog curled at her feet, she's gardening, hiking, reading, or working on her home.

09/21/06