The Tail of Emily Windsnap

Liz Kessler's The Tail of Emily Windsnap is a secret-keeping mermaid story for 10 year olds that begins, of all places, in a school swimming lesson.

What happens

Emily lives on a houseboat. She has never once been in the sea. She has never even had a bath, because there is no room for one on board, and her mum has spent years inventing reasons why swimming is unhealthy and not for people like them.

Emily finally wears her down, and gets a place in the swimming class at her new school.

She is brilliant at it. For about a minute.

Then her legs seize up, lock together and go numb, and she has to be pulled out by the teacher, who tells her kindly that it is only cramp.

It is not cramp. Emily knows it is not cramp, because she felt something the teacher did not see.

What happens next is the bit your reader will love. Emily cannot leave it alone. She writes a forged note to get out of swimming, lies awake half the night, and then creeps off the boat at midnight in her damp swimsuit and jumps off the end of the pier into the dark sea to find out the truth.

It is a lovely piece of writing, that jump. The cold, then the calm, then the change, then Emily deciding to stop fighting it.

The school parts are just as real as the sea parts. Emily is new, she gets lost looking for the canteen, and she has fallen out with a girl called Mandy who now takes every chance to make her look small. Nothing dramatic happens. It is just the low, tiring business of being on the wrong side of someone.

Nothing here needs a warning. Mandy is mean, Emily is lonely, and there are a few uneasy adults around the edges, including a lighthouse keeper who watches Emily out of the corner of his eye and plainly knows something.

A note on the language. This is the American edition, so Emily is in seventh grade at junior high with her bangs pushed off her forehead. It reads perfectly well, but a younger reader may want a quick translation of the school years.

What to read next

If they finish this and want another girl who is only really herself in the water, The Mermaid Call is one to try. Vivien lives beside a lake with a mermaid legend attached to it, has no interest in the village beauty contest, and goes looking for the truth behind the story instead.