SURFIN' SHARKS

Finny friends leap into a third round of adventures and attitude adjustments.

Mako shark Mack is proud of his surfing prowess—until slender, graceful sawshark Telo beats him out at the first Surfin’ Shark Competition, and he grumpily announces that if he can’t be the best, he’s done. Whale shark Kitana, his canny fellow “princess,” thereupon leads him to a “shark spa,” or undersea geothermal vent where the dark water’s too hot for all but other sharks. By the time Mack has used his “sharkle”—the shark sparkles that emanate from his crown—to help reunite a lost baby shark with its mama, he’s mellowed out enough to realize that surfing is too much fun to worry about being best or not (which the other sharks have been telling him all along). So, in a “fintastic” finish, he joins the whole cartilaginous cohort of contestants and spectators in acrobatically riding a collective “party wave,” before going back to chillax in the smoky “spa.” As in the previous installments, lessons on being true to oneself and supporting one’s friends are deftly layered into the humorous, lighthearted narrative. Chanani’s two leads sport crowns but, like all the species of sea life in the cartoon panels here, are otherwise drawn with reasonable fidelity to nature.

Another “jawsome” combination of small adventures and clear, worthy messaging.