Title: WhaleshingerAuthor: Welwyn Wilton Katz
Publish Date: October 2002
Publisher: Groundwood Books
Pages: 212pp
ISBN: 0888991916
Classification: Fiction
Genre: Realistic Fiction
Annotation: Seventeen year old Nick is not yet over the death of his older brother and sixteen year old Marty has learning difficulties. On a scientific field trip on the California coast, these two teenagers come together and share an empathic bond with two grey whales.
Plot Summary: Seventeen-year-old Nick is feeling hurt and angry about his brothers death. To get away from everyone at home in Vancouver, he accepts a research job for a conservation group on Point Reyes and Drake's Bay. He meets Marty, an intensely shy sixteen-year old who seems to have her own set of disabilities. It is these qualities that help Marty communicate with a whale mother and her baby. Together, Nick and Marty discover that the conservation project is a front for a plan to rob the treasure of Sir Francis Drake’s sunken frigate. Nick and Marty make an uncomfortable conformation and experience an earthquake.
Personal Response: A deeply felt novel with a multi-layered storyline of science, love, loss, treasure, and a whale mother with an ailing baby. Katz writes beautifully and depicts deeply touching relationships—the love between Marty and Nick and the love they share with the mother whale and her baby.
~Reader’s Advisory~
Themes: Teen angst.
Age Range: 12 and up
Subjects: Death, Depression, Teen Angst, Anger, Relationships, Family Relationships, Love, Whales, Ecology, Environment, Ocean, Sex, Thievery, Confrontation, Empathy, Earthquake,
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