"A story that is lyrical and empowering as well as profound"
A Julia Eccleshare Pick of the Month March 2022
Award-winning Kiran Millwood Hargrave tells a story of great power and significance with incredible sensitivity and writerly skill. By drawing on both, Julia and the Shark is magical, imaginative and mysterious while also dealing with complex emotions and situations.
Julia and her parents take off from their home in Cornwall to live in a lighthouse on Shetland. Her father is working on fixing the lighthouse light while her mother is determined to explore the wide and very cold seas to find an elusive Greenland shark. While Julia’s father is practical, methodical and minds about numbers, Julia’s mother minds about words and about the scientific research she is so passionate about. While Julia begins to make friends with the few other children around, her mother becomes more and more absorbed in the search for the shark. Nothing will stop her - not the danger and not the cost. Julia wants to help her mother to fulfil her dream but she also knows that there is something irrational, uncontrolled and deadly dangerous about what she is planning to do.
How Julia tries to keep hold of her mother is an emotional rollercoaster. Kiran Millwood Hargrave explores the confusing effect of a parent’s deteriorating mental health in a story that is lyrical and empowering as well as profound.
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A captivating, powerful and luminous story from a bestselling, award-winning author about a mother, a daughter and the great Greenland shark.
The shark was beneath my bed, growing large as the room, large as the lighthouse, rising from unfathomable depths until it ripped the whole island from its roots. The bed was a boat, the shark a tide, and it pulled me so far out to sea I was only a speck, a spot, a mote, a dying star in an unending sky...
Julia has followed her mum and dad to live on a remote island for the summer - her dad, for work; her mother, on a determined mission to find the elusive Greenland shark. But when her mother's obsession threatens to submerge them all, Julia finds herself on an adventure with dark depths and a lighthouse full of hope...
A beautiful, lyrical, uplifting story about a mother, a daughter, and love - with timely themes of the importance of science and the environment.
The LoveReading4Kids Editorial Team have read and reviewed Julia and the Shark and determined it is suitable for children aged 9-12 years old
Julia and the Shark features in the following genres: Ecological and Environmental Interest - Fiction, Recommendations, Stories about Family and Friends, Children's and Young Adult Fiction, Children’s, Teenage and Educational, Featured Books for 11+ readers, Gift Books, Children’s / Teenage stationery and miscellaneous items, Animal Stories, Featured Books for 9+ readers, Fantasy / Magical, Julia Eccleshare's Picks of the Month, PSHE: Family Issues, Personal Social Health Economic (PSHE)
Julia and the Shark is available in Paperback, Hardback
Julia and the Shark was written by Kiran Millwood Hargrave and published by Orion Children's Books an imprint of Hachette Children's Group
Julia and the Shark has 191 pages
£8.09
