Shark Girl

Book: Shark Girl
Author: Kelly Bingham
Audience: Teen
In a Nutshell: girl's life goes on after losing an arm

If only. If only Jane had stayed on the beach. If only she had stayed home. If only her brother Michael had gone swimming with her. Any little factor and things might have been different. But things weren't different, and now Jane is trying to put her life back together after losing an arm and nearly dying in a shark attack.

Losing her right arm would be bad enough, but she's also a talented artist- and right-handed. If she can't draw anymore, who is she now? To make matters worse, it was all captured on home video and sold to the national news stations. Jane dreads returning to school and real life, where she's sure she'll be seen as Shark Girl, the one-armed freak.

This novel in verse draws you into Jane's tragedy, her grief, her anger, her slow recovery, and all the downs and eventual ups of figuring out who she is now. Sometimes she's not a very nice person to be around, and realistically so, but she remains a sympathetic character as you read and hope she makes it through the worst of it stronger- which she does.