Julia and the Shark - Kiran Millwood Hargrave and Tom de Freston

I'm really torn about this book. On the one hand, it's a beautifully illustrated, intelligent exploration of how a parent's depression can affect a child, and how confusing a world of adult emotions can be for a child to navigate. On the other hand, there's such a profound lack of understanding of the Shetland setting that for anyone who knows the islands, or even the north of Scotland, it's hard work to carry on reading.

A quick look at the uniformly positive reviews and list of awards the book has gathered suggest that very few people who do know the north of Scotland have read it, but I really wish that Kiran Millwood Hargrave had chosen a setting she understood, knew, or had spent a bit longer googling. It's partly because I do know Shetland, and Unst, and anything that gets it so fundamentally wrong would irk me, but more so in this case, because the reality of the island would have made a stronger story. 

The long daylight hours of summer, frequently mentioned, but again clearly not understood, would make the star gazing parts of the book difficult - it's really unlikely to be dark enough in the summer. The same long nights can have a very disorientating effect on people who aren't used to it though. The lists of wildlife you might expect to see, specifically, the whales, are off. The dismissal of the possibility of seeing an otter ("unlikely, but possible") when they're hard to avoid, the gorse surrounding the lighthouse, even the seagulls are wrong.

I guess it's fair enough to invent a contemporary need to automate lighthouses (the last ones were done in the 1990s), but not that they were single manned (they weren't, you typically had 3 keepers to take turns to watch, but also for mental health reasons). I don't know why you need to invent a town on Unst (there are a couple of scattered shops, Shetland shops don't set stock outside because it would likely blow away - and the constant wind is another thing that incomers to the islands really struggle with) because again it's isolation and the fact you need to get 2 ferries just to reach the mainland of Shetland is one of the things that makes life there a challenge. Another is that from the age of 12 children have to leave and board on Mainland Shetland to go to School. They come back to the outer isles for summer, not leave them. 

I think maybe the thing that jarred most was the discussion of racism though. It's fair to say any incomers would have a hard time, the prejudice in my childhood was based entirely on accent - if you didn't have the dialect you were marked out as other. I'm not sure how much a difference the colour of your skin might make, but not the difference it makes on mainland Britain. Island cultures are fragile and people are keen to protect their heritage and unique cultures - it's a complex situation so the completely anglicised local bullies grated on me. There's an attitude here that feels like its own form of racism in the casual assumptions and stereotypes it sets on people.

I've written this within minutes of finishing the book, by tomorrow the good bits might have floated to the top of my mind like so much cream - the illustrations really are brilliant, and if you want a poetically beautiful but relatable book to help talk to your children about depression with, you'd probably struggle to find a better one, I just wish it had been set somewhere else.