Saving Shark Pup: The Incredible True Story (Sharon Dalgleish, illus Amandine Thomas, A&U Children’s)

Saving Shark Pup: The Incredible True Story is an intriguing and emotive retelling of a great white shark pup’s dramatic rescue from Manly Beach, sure to captivate readers aged 4 to 8 and shark lovers alike. Sharon Dalgleish recounts this real-life 2017 rescue with energetic, expressive language that blends factual detail with poetic rhythm, bringing both emotion and immediacy to the story. This heartwarming tale of a washed-up shark pup inspires compassion and awareness, showing how the local community rallied to keep him safe and carefully planned his return to the wild. The flowing text design mirrors the movement of the ocean and pairs beautifully with Amandine Thomas’s illustrations, which use expansive double-page spreads to capture the vastness of the sea. Her fluid watercolour and ink artwork conveys both scale and emotion, contrasting the calm blues of the shark pup’s natural habitat with the jarring greens and oranges of its disoriented time in the public arena. Saving Shark Pup is a refreshing narrative nonfiction picture book that dispels fear and illuminates the beauty and significance of great white sharks within the ocean ecosystem. It’s a moving story about empathy, environmental responsibility and caring for all creatures great and small.

Books+Publishing reviewer: Romi Sharp is a writer and digital marketer. Books+Publishing is Australia’s number-one source of pre-publication book reviews.

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