Most children will encounter Mud the Fish first as an endearing character learning what a sentence is in Michael Clay Thompson’s Level 1 writing book Sentence Island (see below). In The Rescue at Fragment Crag, the first novel in the Mud Trilogy, we meet Mud again, along with Fidget the cricket, his subject-verb friend; Oopsy and Daisy, the pelicans who taught him the parts of the sentence; Click the sandpiper; Clack the lobster; Herman the kingfisher; and Merv the mouse. They are joined by Turner the turtle, Baldwin the bellicose and eccentric big-horn beetle, and Marjorie Harbinger, the vivacious wave who brings news of a problem on Fragment Crag, where little Click is injured and has become trapped.

The animals and birds must work together to rescue Click, but things don’t turn out as planned. Fragment Crag is a fearsome, isolated crag where all thoughts are fragments, and an evil rat nearly succeeds in eating Click for dinner. After the rescue there is a falling out among the animals, who only know part of what happened. And they forget that rats can swim. There is another attack and another rescue, after which everyone reflects on what it means to be part of a group and to work together to support one another.