I Could Be Eaten by a Shark

A youngster learns to confront his fears—with help from a loving grandparent.
At the beach, Louie spots “something completely and utterly terrifying.” It’s a shark—not an open-fanged Jaws monster, just a hammerhead’s widely separated eyes peeking above the waves. That’s enough: Louie refuses to go back in. His wise grandfather takes him fishing on the lake instead, but that isn’t any better. In fact, any body of water, right down to a bubble bath, makes Louie “jumpy,” “suspicious,” and subject to “the heebie-jeebies.” At the library, he and his grandpa research sharks: their numerous species, their varied sizes, their life spans, and more. Louie’s glad to hear that shark attacks are rare, but all the same, he keeps his distance from the book Grandpa reads from. Eventually Louie confides that he imagines a shark leaping from his teacup, pursuing him on his bike, springing from his sandbox, and even emerging toothily from the toilet. Apparently well-informed on child development, Grandpa doesn’t try futile reasoning. Instead, he shares his own irrational childhood phobia and how, with time and work, he “learned to live with it.” Louie does the work and eventually passes on the wisdom to his grandchild. Both the folksy text and the upbeat art—featuring pops of neon-bright color, Grandpa’s extravagant mustache, and touches of humor—balance the worries of a “world [that] can be scary” with reassurance that young people are capable of coping with those fears.
Tackles childhood anxieties with a mix of humor and genuine empathy.
—Kirkus Reviews