For the love of . . . sharks!

Toby loves sharks. He reads about them. He talks about them. He draws them.

Recently his friend Sydney lent him her new favorite book, Soul Surfer, a true story about Bethany Hamilton, a teenage surfer who had her arm bitten off by a shark, and continued her surfing career.

As you might guess, Toby is now fascinated by shark attacks as well. We have reams of shark pictures in our house. Here are a couple.

This one is a great white shark eating some fish:

This one is a surfer who is catching a hammerhead shark while surfing:

Toby was thrilled that one of his first project as a third-grader was a report on sharks. What could be better: the chance to read about sharks, write down shark facts, draw a picture of a shark!

Imagine my surprise when his teacher caught me after school to tell me that Toby needs to redo his shark picture.

As it turns out, when Mrs. Anderson asked the kids to draw a shark and label the body parts, she did NOT mean that they should draw the shark eating people. Blood, gore, human body parts sticking out of the shark's mouth do not, apparently, belong in this particular report. Mrs. Anderson said she hopes to display the shark reports for parent-teacher conferences next week.

Is it wrong that I'm most curious to see Toby's original shark drawing??