SHARK LADY: True Adventures of Eugenie Clark

by Ann McGovern ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 12, 1979

As a little girl Eugenie Clark keeps fish in a tank, and in college she studies them though Mama suggests that ""If you learn typing you might be able to be the secretary of a famous ichthyologist."" On her first dive as a research assistant, she experiences a frightening leak in her air line, but later in the South Seas she has no fear of an approaching shark. After the publication of her book Lady with a Spear, Eugenie (now Dr. Clark) has her own marine lab in Florida, financed by the ""very rich"" Vanderbilts; there she's surrounded by her own and other children and by ""scientists from all over the world"" who come to study her sharks. She visits Japan's Crown Prince in his palace, presenting him with a trained shark, and he returns the visit in Florida where she teaches him to dive. On the job (after a second book, The Lady and the Sharks) in underwater caves of Mexico and Japan, she investigates the puzzle of the ""sleeping"" sharks--but no solution is reported here. McGovern has Eugenic planning to do more investigating in the Red Sea, then switches back several years to her previous Red Sea research on the poisonous milk of the Moses sole. The sharks presumably still sleep and so might readers, despite the likely subject. At best, a preview to Clark's own, livelier accounts.

Pub Date: March 12, 1979

ISBN: 0590447718

Page Count: -

Publisher: Four Winds

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1979

Categories: NONFICTION