Customer Reviews

Shark Girl

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

What begins as a typical day at the beach ends in tragedy. While swimming in the ocean, with her mother and older brother looking on, Jane loses her arm to a shark. Needless to say, her life changes forever. While recovering from her loss, she must visit the hospital, the psychiatrist, and the physical therapist in turn. She details these appointments as well as her readjustment to life at home and high school. As different people attempt to heal her body and question her abilities, Jane must try to heal her own spirit and mind.

Jane was once an artist, dependent upon that arm, that hand, those fingers to express herself on paper. Her other arm is fine, but her thoughts don't flow as freely down that way, and her other hand and fingers feel awkward, pudgy, unable to capture the pictures in her mind's eye. Everything looks and feels wrong, wrong, wrong.

Shark Girl by Kelly Bingham is 95% verse novel, with news clippings, letters, and phone conversations interspersed. At first, Jane feels as though she is maybe half of who she once was - maybe even less - but as she attempts to regain control of her life and regrasp her talents, she starts to feel whole again. This book is 100% heart. Recommended.

This is a book you can't put down. The character is strong, likeable, and believable. You will admire her courage and the obstacles she faces in her return to "normal" life. This book is written in prose with letters, conversations and newspaper articles mixed in, which makes it seem so real. You will want to see how Jane overcomes this huge loss and picks up the threads of her life. A heart-warming read!

Shark girl was a very intresting book I thought it related to life in many ways like how tuff it would be to be in a shark attack. Jane must have been one of the luckiest girls that survived in a shark attack. Life would be so hard to live without half of a arm but Jane got threw it . This book was one of the books i liked. There were some boring parts but then it just got better and better. I hope that there will be another book like this one .

Most of us struggle with how we want to be perceived or defined. Am I a good student, a great athlete, an amazing artist? All that was snatched from high schooler Jane. In one moment, she was the victim of a shark attack and barely survived. Now, she would be forever defined as shark girl or the girl with one arm. No more brilliant artist or talented athlete. Shark girl. Or, so she thinks. This novel is written in stream-of-consciousness verse, conversations, newspaper articles and poems (see example below) to capture Jane's road to recovery and the redefinition of self.

Shark Girl is a very very fast paced read. Being set up as a poem structure you don't really feel as though you are reading a typical books. It is very easy to find yourself halfway through the book within a few hours. I finished this book in one sitting. The story is that of a very unlucky little girl that is attacked by a shark. After having mangles her arm terribly that doctors had to amputate, and this is the story of a survivor and struggling to find comfort in her old life. I was exceptionally intrigued by the friend she of Justin and Jane; it was amazing to see how the younger boy was able to accept his disability and more forward. It is heart wrenching to watch Jane possible destructive behavior turned around by the support of a younger child. This story is one that will leave you thinking way past the last page. Just what would you do if you were to lose a arm or a leg? Would we be the strong survivor or would we wallow and lose ourselves in defeat.

Shark girl is a sad book. It is about a girl who gets her arm bitten off by a shark. Her brother thought fast and saved her. She is in the hospital.

READ SHARK GIRL
TO FIND OUT HOW SHE
survives without an arm.

SHARK GIRL by Kelly Bingham is a fast and unusual read. It's written in verse (a style I increasingly love because you can read it so quickly) and it's told by a girl who loses her arm in a shark attack. It's a heartfelt story about what it means to lose something precious. That's obvious, right? I mean, we're talking about an arm here! Somehow, the author manages to convey precisely how it would feel to live with only one arm, the likely awkwardness, the new skills that must be learned. Particularly poignant is the narrator's relationship with her mother and her brother, who treats her the same and who eventually just says, "I don't care how many limbs you have. You need to help me with chores." (He doesn't quite put it like that, but you get the idea.) Because what the narrator wants more than anything is to be treated as a person, not as a person missing an arm.

SHARK GIRL is probably won't be the first book you think of to buy or read. But if you do either, you won't regret it.

Shark Girl by Kelly Bingham is about a fifteen year-old girl named Jane whose arm was eaten by a shark. Now everything in her life is different. People stare wherever she goes. Will she ever be the same again? This book was very inspiring but was not that interesting. I would recommend this book to readers who like nonfiction or realistic fiction books. I kind of liked this book because it had information but wasn't that fun to read.

this book is a very good book that helps you understand life better.
MY son loved it
my daughter loved it

Well this is every ones worst nightmare. A day at the beach turns into a fight for life. As young Jane loses her arm to a shark attack. Her life is changed forever. Follow her along the painful trial as she faces her friends, her family, other people who have lost limbs. Jane who was once an aspiring artist has a hard time using the arm that she didn't use to draw. Shark girl is a verse novel. But it is good though. Clippings and letters and phone conversations tell the story about what this young girl has gone through and what she continues to face. After a shark attack. I loved this book, reminded me of Bethany Hamilton and it reminded me to keep holding on.