The Shark Caller

Zillah Bethell's The Shark Caller is a moving island adventure for 10 year olds about a girl who wants to learn an ancient magic, and the stranger who moves into her old home.

What happens

Blue Wing lives on an island off Papua New Guinea with Siringen, the old shark caller who took her in after her parents died. He can shake a coconut rattle in the sea, chant, and bring sharks to the surface. She wants more than anything for him to teach her.

He won't. Partly it's tradition, because she's a girl. But mostly it's the anger he can see inside her. Magic like his can't be used for that.

The book opens with a rich tourist who has paid to kill a shark. It's an amazing first chapter. Blue Wing slips silently into the water, swims under the struggling shark and cuts it free while the man isn't looking. You're left in no doubt whose side she's on.

Then the village chief brings in some new visitors. An American professor has come to study the coral, along with his daughter Maple, who's about Blue Wing's age. They're moving into the hut where Blue Wing once lived with her mum and dad. She hates them before she's even met them!

Maple isn't exactly friendly either. She refuses to come out, offers Blue Wing a deal so they can both skip the tour, and shuts the door in her face. Watching these two very cross girls circle each other is a big part of the fun.

It's told by Blue Wing in the present tense, so it's very immediate. Her English is sprinkled with words from her own language (taim, tru, nogut) and you soon pick them up.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

Blue Wing's parents are dead and we don't yet know how. She has a frightening nightmare in which they melt into the sea and the water turns red. A child who has lost someone might find those pages hard.

For a reader who loves stories about friendship, grief and the wild natural world, it's a really special book. Chimera, the old woman who lives in a cave, has a lovely line about home being where you're wanted.

What to read next

If they'd like another Zillah Bethell adventure, try The Song Walker. A girl wakes alone in the Australian desert with no memory of who she is, and another girl with secrets of her own becomes her guide.