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  • Swimming with Sharks: The Daring Discoveries of Eugenie Clark by Heather Lang
  • Elizabeth Bush
Lang, Heather Swimming with Sharks: The Daring Discoveries of Eugenie Clark;
illus. by Jordi Solano. Whitman, 2016 [32p] illus. with photographs
ISBN 978-0-8075-2187-8 $16.99
Reviewed from galleys Ad Gr. 3-5

When the biography-report assignment rolls around, the scramble is on for the coolest people middle-graders have never heard of. Consider Eugenie Clark, born in the early 1920s, a time in which a girl with science enthusiasm found the narrowest of opportunities to turn passion into career. Clark earned a master’s degree, lucked into a position as an ichthyologist assistant, and found her way where she wanted to be—on and under the sea studying all kinds of fish, particularly sharks. Careful observation led her to understand sharks are not bloodthirsty predators with their stony black eyes fixed on humans, and by the mid 1950s Clark opened the Cape Haze Marine Laboratory in Florida, taking a leadership role in research and scholarship on sharks and other marine life. While the book capably conveys Clark’s fascination with sharks, a number of actual biographical data points are missing or buried in endnotes, unfortunately leaving readers to discover on their own the details of her family life and her getting a PhD. Clark’s Japanese-American identity, which presented its own considerable challenges to conducting research, is also never mentioned within the body of the text. Solano’s flat, utilitarian artwork is supplemented with four small photographs of Clark at work. Still, the appeal of sharks makes this an easy sell, and the selected sources makes it a possible choice for kids in search of high interest curricular material. [End Page 222]

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