Blob the fish is excited that he has just won the ugliest animal in the world contest! But the popularity and fame that accompany Blob's win soon go to his head. And the loneliness of his new title goes to his heart. And of course, fame never lasts forever.An irreverent and insightful modern fable about beauty, ugliness, the paths to acceptance, and how admiration hijacks our sense of self. ... The illustrations by Tallec lend the humorous story a lovely dimension of tenderness. Blob comes alive as a sensitive creature of contradictions--full of determination yet easily given to dejection, a living fable of ego and insecurity, easy to fault but also easy to love. ... Under Tallec's subtle brush, we see a difficult realization dawn on Blob--privilege is bestowed largely by chance and little of actual substance separates the most fortunate from the least fortunate. There is something charmingly subversive about the very premise, as paradoxical as the idea of trying to fail at failure. There is also something profound in the questions it raises about our civilizational fascination with beauty and its counterpoint--what does it really mean to be ugly...--Brain Pickings