Amphibian

Shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book (Canada and Caribbean region)

A Globe and Mail Top Five First Fiction Title of 2009

Shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book (Canada and Caribbean region)

Nine-year-old Phineas William Walsh has an encyclopedic knowledge of the natural world. He knows that if you wet a dog's food with your saliva and he refuses to eat it then he's top dog, and he knows that dolphins can sleep half a brain at a time. What he doesn't know, though, is why his grandfather died, or why waste-of-flesh Lyle always picks on him. Or why his parents can't live together — after all, when other mate-for-life animals have a fight, it's not like one of them just packs his bags and leaves the country.

To make it to-infinity worse, he's worried sick about what humans are doing to the planet, and his mother is worried sick about him. But shouldn't everyone be losing sleep over the fact that a quarter of all Earth's mammals are on the Red List of Threatened Species? So, when a White's tree frog ends up in an aquarium in his fourth-grade classroom, it's the last straw, and he and his best friend, Bird, are spurred to action.

Shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, Amphibian is the story of nine-year-old Phineas William Walsh, who has an encyclopedic knowledge of the natural world, but can't figure out the human world around him. He's worried sick about what people are doing to the planet, and his mother is worried sick about him. So, when a tree frog ends up in his classroom aquarium, Phin is spurred to action.

Carla Gunns work has been published in the Globe and Mail, the National Post and heard on CBC radio. Along with writing, she teaches psychology and she worries. About everything. But especially climate change, mass extinctions and that mole that she can feel but not see. This is her first novel.