The title promises a picture book. The inside is nothing of the sort.
This is a chapter book, from the same numbered line as the germ one and the magnetism one. Plain paragraphs, black and white drawings, no crowded cartoon pages and no reports taped round the margins. Hand it to a six year old who was expecting the picture book and you will get a disappointed six year old, and it will not be the book's fault.
The store credits Jennifer Johnston. A class trip to the aquarium turns into open water, there is a great white in the way, and the shark species arrive while the class works out how to get clear.
The science it actually teaches
Here I have to be straight with you, because being straight is the whole point of this Stealth Science shelf. This one is a tour, not a mechanism.
The germ book in this line teaches how an infection works. The magnetism one hands you a procedure you can run at the table. This book hands you a cast list. What your child comes away with is that "shark" is a category rather than an animal, and that the members of it sit much further apart than anyone expects.
That is worth having. It is worth quite a lot, honestly, for a child whose entire idea of a shark comes off a film poster. The whale shark is the largest fish alive and it feeds by straining tiny drifting food out of the water. The angel shark is flat, buried in sand, and looks like something went wrong. The goblin shark lives where no light reaches and it looks it. Put those three in a child's head and the great white stops being the definition of a shark and becomes one example of one.
Underneath that there is a real idea, even if the book does not name it: body shape follows the way an animal feeds and the place it lives. Flat body, sandy floor. Enormous body, tiny food. That is the beginning of thinking about form and function, and a seven year old can pick it up from three pictures.
What you will not get is the how. Cartilage in place of bone, skin built out of tooth-shaped scales, the electric sense in the snout that finds a fish buried and holding still: none of that is the spine of this book, and where it appears it appears in passing. A child who finishes this can name sharks. A child who finishes a proper shark biology book can tell you how one finds a meal it cannot see.
So, real science, and broad rather than deep. That is a fine thing for a book to be. It is just not the same purchase as the other two.
The child it lands with
The shark child. There is always one.
More precisely, the seven or eight year old who wants sharks this week and is not yet reading well enough for the serious shark books with the photographs. This is a bridge, and it is a good one.
One place to stop and talk
One question, at the whale shark. The biggest fish in the ocean eats the smallest food in it. Ask your child why that is not backwards.
What to know going in
There is a great white with its mouth open and it is the engine of the plot. Nobody is eaten and nothing is gory, but the book spends its length being chased, and a child who is currently uneasy about deep water or about what might be under a boat will not be helped by it and may go backwards a season. That is a wait a year problem, not a never problem. The sharks will still be there.
The other thing is the format, and it is why this section runs to two paragraphs instead of one. This is a chapter book wearing a picture book's title, and the mismatch has soured more than one read in more than one house. Check the reading level against your child before it arrives, not after.
Where to get it
$4.99 at The Great Shark Escape, which makes it one of the cheaper things on the Stealth Science shelf and priced about right for what it is. Borrow it first if your library has a copy. If your child comes out the far side still hungry for sharks, that is your signal to go spend real money on a proper shark reference, and this book will have done exactly the job it was good for.
If your child liked this one
Books we have written about that sit close to this one, by reading level and by subject.
Amazing Magnetism: Science You Can Check With a Magnet
Amazing Magnetism (the Magic School Bus Chapter Book #12) by Rebecca Carmi
Grade 2 to 4
The Electric Field Trip: The Magic School Bus on Wiring
The Magic School Bus and the Electric Field Trip by Joanna Cole
Grade 2 to 4
Ada Lace and the Impossible Mission: Scale and Sensors
Ada Lace and the Impossible Mission by Emily Calandrelli
Grade 2 to 5
Browse every book we have written about by age, by kind of book and by subject: Find the right book for your child. Or see the whole Stealth Science shelf.
