(+++) BITING OFF A BIT TOO MUCH TO CHEW

Mother of Sharks. By Melissa Cristina Márquez. Illustrated by Devin Elle Kurtz. Penguin Workshop. $19.99.

     An intermittently charming book that tries to be three things at once and as a result is never quite any one of them, Melissa Cristina Márquez’ Mother of Sharks strikes an uneasy balance among the real world, a fantasy world, and an advocacy position. Márquez is a marine biologist and wildlife educator, and would certainly be able to get young readers (ages 5-8) interested in the amazing world of sharks if she chose to make that her book’s focus. Certainly there are sharks here: illustrations of more than two dozen types decorate the inside front and inside back covers and their facing pages. And the mako shark, nurse shark, sixgill shark, and Greenland shark make cameo appearances in the book, likely whetting some young readers’ appetites for more information on these fascinating fish – and perhaps sending them to some of the back-of-the-book resources recommended by the author.

     So far, so good. But the sharks are just one of the topics here, and not the major one. The second element is autobiography and, by extension, advocacy. Márquez makes it clear that the book is in large part her own story, the tale of her “childhood memories of exploring the ocean at la Playita del Condado in San Juan, Puerto Rico.” Márquez uses that personal element as the basis for a diversity-and-inclusion plea, advocating for a greater Hispanic presence in STEM fields such as marine biology. That is the second Mother of Sharks topic, an adult-oriented one that fits at best uneasily with the scientific elements of marine biology in a book for young children.

     And then there is the third element, that of fantasy. In her attempt to sew the other two elements together and get very young readers interested in them, Márquez creates a kind of framing story in which a young girl (obviously Márquez herself) is swept into and under the waters for some firsthand exploration, after meeting a magical crab named Jaiba that introduces her not only to marine life but also to the title character of the book – who, no surprise, turns out to be the young girl’s adult alter ego. Jaiba is a pure deus ex machina, existing solely to give the author a way to bring child-Melissa and adult-Melissa together in a shared scientific and emotional experience that also is supposed to serve as an advocacy position. That is a lot of freight to load onto 48 pages that are dominated, as usual in books for this age range, by illustrations rather than words (and the Devin Elle Kurtz pictures are quite fine, actually providing the book with the majority of its continuity and much of its charm).

     It is perhaps not surprising that packing a short, young-child-focused book with so many themes and ideas results in a neither-here-nor-there work despite the obvious intention of it being both here and there. But it is a bit disappointing that Márquez is not quite sure how to balance her three themes or, if they cannot be balanced, to decide to which of them to grant prominence. The book’s title implies an autobiographical focus: this is the story of how the child that Márquez was became the “mother of sharks” that she now considers herself to be. But young readers are likely to be much more intrigued by the magical crab (despite Jaiba’s total lack of personality) or by the chance to learn about sharks (a squandered opportunity, since they appear here only in passing). Certainly the “you can do it!” element of the diversity advocacy comes through clearly enough, but that STEM focus is an adult concern: Márquez would more effectively bring young readers (of any appearance and background) into the world of marine biology by enticing them with fascinating elements of the water world and, specifically, the diversity of sharks rather than of STEM workers. It is left to the shark illustrations at the book’s front and back to suggest that there is a lot more to sharks than the book’s narrative ever reveals or even implies. Hopefully at least some readers will find the fantasy elements of Mother of Sharks intriguing enough so they decide to explore the science of shark study in much greater detail than Márquez hints at in this well-meaning but overly earnest attempt to knit multiple threads into a single tapestry.