Emily Windsnap and the Tides of Time

Liz Kessler's Emily Windsnap and the Tides of Time is a mermaid story for 10 year olds that begins with a lonely first day back at school and a stone that might just grant wishes.

What happens

Emily is home in Brightport after months of adventures at sea, and ordinary life isn't going well. Aaron has moved away. Her friend Mandy won't even look at her.

When the teacher asks everyone for their favourite thing from the holidays, Emily panics. She holds up a stone and calls it magic. Then she reads out the poem that came with it (which goes down about as well as you'd expect).

The stone was a Christmas present from Millie, her mum's fortune-telling best friend, and it's meant to give its owner three wishes. Emily doesn't really believe that. But alone in her bedroom, she makes a wish anyway. Within minutes there's a knock at the door.

The friendship part is what really works here. Emily and Mandy have a proper row on the walk home, and the thing is, they've both got a point. Emily HAS been going on about her adventures. Who hasn't come back from something exciting and found that nobody else wants to hear about it?

Mandy's home life is the heavier bit. Her parents put all their money into a theme park that isn't paying, and they argue a lot. It's told gently, but a child whose family is going through money worries might find it close to home.

Shona has a worry of her own. Her class at mermaid school is researching plastic in the sea, and she's cross that humans don't seem to care. Emily feels it too.

Then the stone starts tugging her out to sea. A current drags her down through a crack in the seabed, and she comes out somewhere that looks like Brightport. Except strangers keep waving and calling her Ms. Windsnap. The title might give you a clue!

Emily tells it all herself. She's thirteen and in eighth grade here (it's the American edition), and her worries about fitting in feel very real. It starts quietly, then gets very strange very quickly.

This is the ninth Emily Windsnap book and leans on lots of what's gone before. A reader who's new to the series should begin with The Tail of Emily Windsnap.

What to read next

If the wishing stone is the bit that grabs them, try Five Children and It. Five brothers and sisters dig up a grumpy sand-fairy who grants one wish a day, and the wishes never turn out quite how anyone planned. It's a much older book (and sounds it), but it's brilliant fun.