Simon The Smiling Shark had always had trouble being a shark.

Simon knew that sharks were always scary but he had one big problem; Simon could never stop smiling and so none of the other creatures in the ocean ever took him seriously.

There he’d be circling like all the other sharks, playing his scary shark music:
Doom doom doom doom
Doom doom doom doom
Dooooooooooom.

Then Simon would show his big, scary shark teeth and his lips would curl up into a great big beaming smile.

Poor little Simon didn’t know what to do, the Angel Fish loved him and he was always invited into schools of fish to play in the Playground with the little fish.

But whenever he went near the other sharks they just snapped their big scary teeth at him.

It made Simon feel sadder and sadder because none of the bigger sharks liked him, until one day he went to the fish school and he couldn’t even manage one teeny weeny smile.

All the little fish from the school gathered around Simon and tried to cheer him up. Finally, his friend the Angel Fish asked Simon what was wrong.

All the little fish felt very sad when Simon explained about his smiling and how it made it really hard for him to look even a little bit like a really really scary shark.

Later, when all the little fish went back into school they told their teacher about poor Simon’s problem.

Their teacher, Miss Guppy, laughed and laughed ”You’re telling me that Simon’s sad because he doesn’t have any friends?” she said when she’d finally stopped laughing. Put your fin up every little fish who’s Simon’s friend” Miss Guppy said, and every little fish in the whole classroom pointed their fin high into the water.

“You see” said Miss Guppy “I think Simon has more friends than anyone else I know. All the other sharks only have sharks for friends, so they can never have lots of friends like Simon does. I think they’re all jealous of our friend Simon”.

All the little fish did loop the loops and blew huge clouds of bubbles because they were so excited; they couldn’t wait to get out into the playground to tell Simon.

Simon was sitting under the coral at the bottom of the playground when suddenly the shadow of the biggest shark anybody had ever, ever seen slowly crept right over him; Simon was so scared he couldn’t even move.

Finally. With a humongous gulp, Simon slowly lifted his head up and he was starring right into the eyes of a ginormous shark and slowly its lips curled up showing huge white teeth in a great, big smile.

Then in a flash and a splash, the ginormous shark exploded in a wild flurry of fins, gills and tails and turned into a gigantic school of school fish.

All of Simons friends had joined together in the shape of an humongous shark to show him that even the biggest shark ever could smile. Now they were all spinning and loop the looping and blowing so many bubbles that for a moment Simon thought he was swimming through the air.

Just when all the bubbles had calmed down, the parents of all the school fish arrived and the whole thing started again.
Simon was surrounded by a world of fish and he knew they were all there because they were all his friends.

Suddenly, he burst out laughing “All those poor sharks really don’t know what they’re missing” he said when he’d calmed down enough to talk. “lf only they’d smile now and then they could have lots of friends like me”.

And from that day on Simon spent most of his time smiling and the rest of the time teaching the bigger sharks how to smile.

So if you go down to the ocean, watch for smiling sharks because it might be Simon or one of his friends. And remember, it’s always better to have friends than to be scary.