Book Review: To Catch a Mermaid, by Suzanne Selfors
Progress Broom awoke to find his little sister, Mertyle, looking for spots.
"It's a orderly day for spots," she announced, examining her knobby knees with a magnifying tumbler. While Boom rubbed sleep from his eyes and stumbled out of bed, his sister made up another side-splitting excuse for not going to school.
Overview:Delving patronize into To Catch a Mermaid, the reader discovers that Roar Broom is a twelve-year-old with a lot on his shoulders. Yet since a freak twister touched down in Fairweather Ait a year ago right in the Broom's front yard, and carried off Mrs. Broom, the blood had never been the same. Mr. Broom refuses to pull up stakes the attic except for bathroom breaks, or to grab prog prepared by the hired cook. The cook is a proud Viking son named Halvor who only prepars fish, fish, more fish, and ample black coffee. Mertyle, Boom's little sister, refuses to scram the house, inventing one sickness after another so she wouldn't require to go to school. Boom refuses to let the twister alter his life-force and tries to carry on, but he still has to deal with his one's nearest's eccentricities, and with neighborhood bully Hurley Mump and his equally bully-ish one's own flesh.
Then one day, Boom is sent out to get fish for dinner. He brings about a very odd fish salvaged from a reject seafood pail down at the docks. When he and Mertyle discover the fish is no fish, but a proper, live merbaby, things start to get interesting...
For Teachers and Librarians:The creator crafts a totally believable story around a deformity twister, a grieving family...and...
