Author:  Joseph Monninger
ISBN:  978-0-385-73941-2

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Talk about karma, gang.  My daughter has wanted to swim and save sharks since she was six years old.  Nope.  Not kidding.  Her grandmother was babysitting her one evening and she thought her beloved granddaughter was sleeping.  Turns out what her granddaughter was doing was hiding behind the sofa because she heard the “cool” music coming from the living room and ended up watching JAWS.  I’ll tell you…when that man had the nerve to point and shoot the beloved Bruce, my daughter burst into tears and decided then and there that the one and only thing she wanted to do with her life was save those poor, misunderstood creatures. 
 
This fantastic story certainly headlines a child’s extreme wish to connect with those killers of the deep face to face.  This young man is eleven-year-old, Tommy.  Tommy is a wonderful boy who, unfortunately, is suffering from cystic-fibrosis.  His mother wants a family vacation and Tommy wants nothing more than to see a shark.  When a wish foundation grants Tommy his dream, he, his mom and his older sister Bee, board a plane to San Francisco.
 
On the plane Mom spends most of her time flirting with a potential boyfriend.  Now, I don’t want this to sound too bad.  Mom is not a bad mom; she does love her kids.  What she is, is lonely.  Her husband was a furnace installer and left the family and she has had to struggle to raise her children – and she is sick of being alone.  Bee understands this…sort of.  But what she really wants her mother to do is understand that Tommy has needs and that this vacation is actually a gift for him, and not her mother.  In fact, Bee gets mad a great deal.  She’s extremely smart and loves Tommy more than anything else in the whole world.  She’s the one who constantly takes care of him – giving him his medication, watching him to see if he can breathe, etc.  She knows that this is not a Disney outing; this is a lifetime dream of Tommy’s and he is very serious about it.
 
When they land in San Francisco and are met by the wish foundation’s man, Mr. Cotter, they are both happy with the kindness that he exudes.  He sets them up in a hotel and readers are given a glimpse into what the San Francisco Fisherman’s Wharf area really looks like.  The writer does such a good job here that you can almost here the “barking” of the seals, and see the white waves of the surf smashing against the myriad of rocks. 
 
From the ship journey with Captain O’Shay, to meeting up with a friend that Tommy met on the internet who is a survivor of a run-in with a great white, every chapter gets more and more fascinating.  The shark facts, and the way that Tommy’s dream unfolds is extremely interesting, heartfelt, and uplifting.  Within this adventure story is a truly wonderful, emotional tale about a family who has to work through some serious issues and find the love that they have buried deep inside for one another.
 
A truly wonderful tale!  And an update…my daughter is now eighteen and in college working for her degree in marine biology.  See?  Some dreams never die J  Enjoy!
 
 
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