Pictures by Scott Dawson

When I first picked up this book, I thought: “Hmm. I’ve never heard of any shark attacks in the U.S. at the turn of the century.” Now that I’ve read the book, I guess my original lack of knowledge isn’t all that surprising.

Whereas the events in Lauren Tarshis’ other books in the I Survived series were world-famous—Pearl Harbor, the Nazi invasion, the San Francisco Earthquake, etc.—the shark attacks in this story were neither widespread nor all that deadly. In fact, the sharks that roamed the coasts and even tributaries of the American Northeast in the summer of 1916 killed only four people and injured just one. Such an event must have been terribly sad for family and the local community at the time, but 100 years later and in the grand scheme of human history, it’s hardly worth immortalizing in its own book! But then again, I read it. And now I know more about 1916 than I did last week, so I can’t fault Tarshis for discovering a unique event from our national past.

What made these particular shark attacks strange was not so much that the sharks killed several people but rather where they killed them. Two swimmers were killed while swimming in the Atlantic ocean, a bit further north than most people had expected to meet up with dangerous sharks, but still: in the ocean. Weirder still, two more swimmers were killed twelve miles inland while wading in a fresh water creek! Talk about a strange-but-true tale! A fifth boy was injured by a shark in that very same creek, and this real person became Tarshis’ inspiration for her fictional boy, Chet, and his new friends in Elm Hills, New Jersey.

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, the title of the books in this I Survived series are a bit misleading, because they’re far better described as historical fiction and adventure novels than survival books. In fact, there’s nothing in this book to say how Chet survived his shark attack, other than something along the lines of, “I didn’t die.”

While “did’t die” is essentially the dictionary definition of “survive,” the connotation of such a word leads us to expect that, by reading the book, we’ll learn more about how we too could survive unexpected shark attacks in the future (i.e. punch the thing in its gills!). The couple pages of back-matter describing the frequency of shark attacks, methods of how to avoid attracting sharks while swimming are helpful, but more info on how to stave off such an angry predator would have been helpful information as well. Sadly, Tarshis sort of leaves her readers hanging in this regard

I’ll keep reading books from this series as I come upon them in my historical readings, but the fact that they appear to tout survival without actually teaching much seems like a missed opportunity. I kind-of-sort-of recommend them. Just don’t expect to learn a whole lot.

©2020 E.T.

Read More from Lauren Tarshis:

• I Survived the Shark Attacks of 1916 by Lauren Tarshis (2010)
• I Survived the San Francisco Earthquake, 1906 by Lauren Tarshis (2012)
• I Survived the Sinking of the Titanic, 1912: The Graphic Novel by Lauren Tarshis and Haus Studio (2020)
• I Survived the Shark Attacks of 1916: The Graphic Novel by Lauren Tarshis and Haus Studio (2020)
• I Survived the Nazi Invasion, 1944 by Lauren Tarshis (2021)