bookshelf

I COULD BE EATEN BY A SHARK

Name: I COULD BE EATEN BY A SHARK
Author: Marcela Ferreira
ISBN: 9781623547691

by Marcela Ferreira ; illustrated by Mark Chambers ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 5, 2026

Tackles childhood anxieties with a mix of humor and genuine empathy.

bookshelf

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. (Picture book. 3-7)

Pub Date: May 5, 2026

ISBN: 9781623547691

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Charlesbridge

Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2026

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2026

Categories:

CHILDREN'S ANIMALS | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES | CHILDREN'S HEALTH & DAILY LIVING

bookshelf

LOVE FROM THE VERY HUNGRY CATERPILLAR

by Eric Carle ; illustrated by Eric Carle ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 15, 2015

Safe to creep on by.

bookshelf

Carle’s famous caterpillar expresses its love.

In three sentences that stretch out over most of the book’s 32 pages, the (here, at least) not-so-ravenous larva first describes the object of its love, then describes how that loved one makes it feel before concluding, “That’s why… / I[heart]U.” There is little original in either visual or textual content, much of it mined from The Very Hungry Caterpillar. “You are… / …so sweet,” proclaims the caterpillar as it crawls through the hole it’s munched in a strawberry; “…the cherry on my cake,” it says as it perches on the familiar square of chocolate cake; “…the apple of my eye,” it announces as it emerges from an apple. Images familiar from other works join the smiling sun that shone down on the caterpillar as it delivers assurances that “you make… / …the sun shine brighter / …the stars sparkle,” and so on. The book is small, only 7 inches high and 5 ¾ inches across when closed—probably not coincidentally about the size of a greeting card. While generations of children have grown up with the ravenous caterpillar, this collection of Carle imagery and platitudinous sentiment has little of his classic’s charm. The melding of Carle’s caterpillar with Robert Indiana’s iconic LOVE on the book’s cover, alas, draws further attention to its derivative nature.

Safe to creep on by. (Picture book. 3-6)

Pub Date: Dec. 15, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-448-48932-2

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Grosset & Dunlap

Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2021

Categories:

CHILDREN'S HOLIDAYS & CELEBRATIONS | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES

- BOOK REVIEW
WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE FOOD?
edited by Eric Carle

- BOOK REVIEW
WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE BUG?
edited by Eric Carle

- BOOK REVIEW
MY FIRST I SEE YOU
by Eric Carle ; illustrated by Eric Carle

bookshelf

ON THE FIRST DAY OF KINDERGARTEN

by Tish Rabe ; illustrated by Laura Hughes ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 21, 2016

While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of...

bookshelf

Rabe follows a young girl through her first 12 days of kindergarten in this book based on the familiar Christmas carol.

The typical firsts of school are here: riding the bus, making friends, sliding on the playground slide, counting, sorting shapes, laughing at lunch, painting, singing, reading, running, jumping rope, and going on a field trip. While the days are given ordinal numbers, the song skips the cardinal numbers in the verses, and the rhythm is sometimes off: “On the second day of kindergarten / I thought it was so cool / making lots of friends / and riding the bus to my school!” The narrator is a white brunette who wears either a tunic or a dress each day, making her pretty easy to differentiate from her classmates, a nice mix in terms of race; two students even sport glasses. The children in the ink, paint, and collage digital spreads show a variety of emotions, but most are happy to be at school, and the surroundings will be familiar to those who have made an orientation visit to their own schools.

While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of Kindergarten (2003), it basically gets the job done. (Picture book. 4-7)