By Jess Keating
The true story of the little girl who fell in love with sharks at an aquarium and grew up to become the scientist who proved they aren't mindless monsters.
Eugenie Clark pressed her face to an aquarium tank when she was nine, watched the sharks glide past, and decided that was what she wanted to do with her whole life. People told her girls did not become scientists and that sharks were dangerous, brainless killers. She spent her life proving both ideas wrong: she learned to dive, she swam with sharks nobody else would go near, and she showed the world they were smart, careful creatures worth protecting. This is the shark biography for the child who wants a hero, not just facts.
Eugenie Clark spent her life underwater with sharks after being told girls couldn't be scientists, so a shark-obsessed child gets both a real scientist to admire and a role model who was told no and kept going. The art glows, the sharks are beautiful rather than scary, and the ending is triumphant. It is a lovely counterweight to all the teeth-and-terror shark media a child soaks up elsewhere.