Like his father and grandfather before him, 14-year-old Tomás Torres dreams of catching a great shark in the Sea of Cortez—and he will catch it, although there are other things he should be thinking about. With an education, her could someday become a marine biologist. Tomás' family want him to stay in school. But Tomás knows he will be more help to them if he leaves school now to become a fisherman. Should he drop out? The choice is Tomás alone—a difficult one for a boy just becoming a man. It is only underwater, in a confrontation with the fisherman's greatest prize and worst enemy, that Tomás finds the strength to make his decision.
Author
Jean Craighead George wrote over eighty popular books for young adults, including the Newbery Medal-winning Julie of the Wolves and the Newbery Honor book My Side of the Mountain. Most of her books deal with topics related to the environment and the natural world. While she mostly wrote children's fiction, she also wrote at least two guides to cooking with wild foods, and an autobiography, Journey Inward. The mother of three children, (Twig C. George, Craig, and T. Luke George) Jean George was a grandmother who joyfully read to her grandchildren since the time they were born. Over the years Jean George kept one hundred and seventy-three pets, not including dogs and cats, in her home in Chappaqua, New York. "Most of these wild animals depart in autumn when the sun changes their behaviour and they feel the urge to migrate or go off alone. While they are with us, however, they become characters in my books, articles, and stories."
