The Tide Singer

Eloise Williams's The Tide Singer is a shivery seaside story for 10 year olds about a girl who looks after the dead and the stranger a storm washes up.

What happens

Morwenna and her Da run the funeral parlour in Carregton Crow, a small harbour town, in 1895. She makes candles, stitches cloths for the coffins and rows out with Da to the family's island cemetery. She even says hello to the graves by name.

The town has been battered by storms for years. Boats have been lost, and so have the men on board. Everyone says it's the fault of the tide singers, sea folk who are supposed to sing up the weather.

Morwenna doesn't believe a word of it. Then one wild night a fisherman carries in a half-drowned girl tangled in his net. Her hair won't dry however much Morwenna rubs it. She swallows a whole fish and pulls it back out as a skeleton. And when she sings into a ladle of water, the storm outside just stops.

Morwenna tells the story herself, so you're right there with her when she's tempted to try that song on her own. Would you be able to resist? (She can't, and it goes badly.)

It's so atmospheric. Warm wax and gulls, salt spray and a smugglers' tunnel down to the harbour. It's funny too, especially the tide singer snoring and burping little clouds of salt at the moon.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

Death is part of everyday life in Morwenna's house. Bodies are laid out in the parlour, there are empty graves for fishermen lost at sea, and an owl carries off a small animal in front of her. Later a frightened crowd locks the tide singer in a glass case in the town museum, which is quite upsetting to read.

If your reader is sensitive about death this might be a lot. But if they like a gothic, misty feel with a big kind heart at the centre, they'll probably love Morwenna.

What to read next

If they'd like another island story from the same author, try Elen's Island. Elen is packed off to her gran's on a Welsh island for the summer and is absolutely FURIOUS about it, at least to begin with.