Sharks In The Time Of Behaviors Chapter Summary

The book Sharks In The Time of Saviors by Kawai Strong Washburn is written with each chapter being a different first person perspective within multiple of the important characters. We hear the story through each of their own eyes. Each major character gets to express their feelings to the reader in a way that no one else in the story would understand. The chapters get traded off between Malia, Nainoa, Kaui, Dean, and the last chapter of the book Augie. We see the struggles of every character in their own way. The first chapter starts with Malia’s perspective. We get to read how she is thinking from the time before Nainoa is born. We get to see how happy she is with Augie from her view. Once Malia realizes the things that Nainoa is capable of, she starts pushing him to try his full abilities. As a reader, we get to embrace what she is thinking and we see that all she wants is the best for him. After the realization that Nainoa was special Malia started giving him more attention than her other two kids Kaui and Dean. Kaui was the youngest and felt that her abilities were unnoticed. In chapter 3 Kaui thought, “Everywhere I entered, a breath later, I was nainoa’s sister, the shark one, they say he can do crazy things.” If the perspective had never changed to Kaui’s then we would have never known exactly how left out she feels. In another sentence I read, “I figured it didn’t matter what Dean or me did, then. Turns out I was wrong.” Kaui was feeling unrepresented

We get to embrace the feelings of Nainoa and when we can no longer read from him then we know that character is no longer alive in the book. Having this happen connects us more towards the character and shows the realness of how he would no longer be able to express his feelings if he is no longer there. It would not have made sense if they continued with chapters about him since there is not a way for us to understand what is going through his head if he is