cover image Real Kids Real Adventures: Shark Attack

Real Kids Real Adventures: Shark Attack

Deborah Morris. Berkley Trade Pub, $3.99 (112pp) ISBN 978-0-425-15938-5

With mixed results, this debut book in the Real Kids, Real Adventures series attempts to bring to the page real-life survival tales reminiscent of those played out on TV's Rescue 911. Despite the breathless titles of the three incidents Morris recounts (""A Sudden Shark Attack!"" ""A Thirty-Five-Foot Fall!"" ""A Ski Slope Rescue!""), readers aren't apt to do a lot of breath-holding. For the most part, the moments of suspense pass quickly, and the scene-setting narratives, monotonous and laden with irrelevant detail, make them hardly worth the wait. In the first story, a shark latches on to a swimming girl's foot; in the second, an eight-year-old drives a truck along a cliffside road to get help after her father falls from a high tree. The final entry offers the most sustained tension and involving description. Here a teenager working at a ski resort climbs onto the top of a 40-foot pole and leaps through the air to grab a chairlift's cable so he can rescue a child dangling above the ground. Only in the final pages are kids likely to experience the ""pulse-pounding"" promised by the publisher. Ages 8-12. (Aug.)