Sharkblock, far from jumps the subject matter for ages 4 and up

Don’t judge a book by its cover. I know the saying. Yet, I was completely judging Sharkblock before looking at it. Ironically, my first thought was that the ‘block’ series has jumped the shark. How could Franceschelli and Peskimo make a block book about sharks that was something more than just a board book asking young readers to look at the sharks? Quicker than you can say ‘hold my cartilage they’ve made a book that continues the excellence that you’d expect from this series. Sharkblock has the thick, interactive pages that fans of the series expect to see, but has added education in the most kid-friendly way possible to their subject matter.

What’s more, the book manages to teach older readers something. I would be hanging my head in board book shame if I didn’t admit that I, a middle-aged dad to two elementary students, learned a handful of things. It does this by continuing to use its simple sentences, bright images and pages that all but dig a hole for readers to trap themselves in. A shark is a shark you say, I said that too, yet there are more than 400 varieties of them that can make kids as young as two, or as old as ten curious about these fish.

The Thresher Shark has the longest tail of any shark and uses it to subdue schools of fish. The Epaulette Shark can walk on land. Porbeagles are a type of shark that lives in the Arctic. There are a couple of other facts that I’d bet that most young readers and adults don’t know. Facts of this magnitude weren’t something that I expected to see, much less learn, when I opened SharkBlock.

The interactive elements, pages that fold up, out, or down, plus those awesome gatefold displays are still here. These Block books continue to surprise me and have evolved as their popularity has increased. You’ll see them displayed in the endcaps at big box stores like Target, and they’ll pop up during your Amazon searches for like-minded content. What’s more, as the series has advanced, they’ve gotten smarter, yet have retained the X factor that makes them so appealing to pre-K and elementary audiences.

Young readers want to immerse themselves in a book about sharks. They find them fascinating, mysterious, educational (but don’t tell them…) with just the right amount of scary to make them a subject that they want to open a book about. SharkBlock is that book for ages four through ten. Those older ages might begrudgingly open the book, just so that their contemporaries don’t see them learning something from a board book, but they’ll do it. Those younger ages are the sweet spot and this is the kind of book they’ll obsess over, quote facts about and try to find other books so that they can learn more about sharks.

SharkBlock is by Christopher Franceschelli with art by Peskimo and available on Abrams Appleseed, an imprint of Abrams Books.

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