The Boy and the Whale Christmas Fairy Tale (1994) I wondered why the beginning of the story felt contrived to me. It’s a bit long and tedious . About half way in, a real whale appears on Christmas Day in response to a lonely boy’s wish. When the boy exclaims, “‘I will call you Shamu,’” I nearly closed the book in disgust. Shamu was the name of a whale at Sea World. Such marketing is familiar, perhaps Disney being the most obvious. “Merch” is everywhere these days. In this case, I am offended because there’s no obvious clue on the cover nor at the outset that this is embedded advertising. I didn’t take note of the small "Sea World Editions” trademark on the dust jacket. There’s no cover art on the book itself, so anyone reading it without the dust jacket would need to read the copyright page to find this information. Maybe I would have enjoyed the story more if the marketing hadn’t taken me by surprise. It’s too late for me to know. This book is not literature but a marketing trick, in my opinion.
