Review: The Tail of Emily Windsnap

The Tail of Emily Windsnap by Liz Kessler
2.5 stars

Jennie asked: From what I know, The Tail of Emily Windsnap is about being a mermaid. However, I've only read the back of the book. What else is the book about? Are you interested in reading the sequel? It's also a children's book. Would you recommend it to adult readers?

It's basically about a mermaid. :-) It's also about interspecies breeding and wrongful imprisonment, how's that for a children's story?!

Here's how School Library Journal sums the book up: "Seventh-grader Emily Windsnap has never learned to swim, in spite of the fact that she and her mother live on a houseboat. When she finally takes a swimming class at school, her legs turn into a fishtail. She tries to hide her strange affliction, but something draws her to the sparkling surf. Soon, she is secretly gliding through the water as a mermaid. Below the waves, she meets Shona, also 12, who takes her to mermaid school and leads her on several adventures. When Emily learns the intriguing history of the Shiprock community and of illegal marriages between humans and merpeople, she begins to look for her merman father. Danger, humor, confrontation, and even a trial before Neptune all play a part in her search. Eventually, she finds her dad and comes to understand the truth about her oddly controlling neighbor, Mr. Beeston; her mother's dislike of water; and her parents' love affair. All ends well when the family is reunited and swims away to live a new life on a secret merfolk island."

I wouldn't not recommend it to adult readers, but it's definitely a younger kids' book with not a lot to it. It's not a bad story, but there's not a whole lot of character development and I rather found the way the mer-people had been controlling her mother for 12 years pretty creepy. I won't be reading the sequel. I read this one because I had to do a booktalk on it (and I do love mermaids) and I don't regret it, but I don't really care what happens to the Windsnap family.

But I'd recommend it to 7-10 year-old girls and their parents, it's a fun little story and I'd say it's certainly better than reading the latest Hannah Montana paperback or whatever type of fairies Daisy Meadows is up to now.