Book Review: To Catch a Mermaid, by Suzanne Selfors
Thrive Broom awoke to find his little sister, Mertyle, looking for spots.
"It's a sympathetic day for spots," she announced, examining her knobby knees with a magnifying spyglass. While Boom rubbed sleep from his eyes and stumbled out of bed, his sister made up another comical excuse for not going to school.
Overview:Delving to a greater distance into To Catch a Mermaid, the reader discovers that Burgeon Broom is a twelve-year-old with a lot on his shoulders. In all cases since a freak twister touched down in Fairweather Cay a year ago right in the Broom's front yard, and carried off Mrs. Broom, the household had never been the same. Mr. Broom refuses to split the attic except for bathroom breaks, or to grab eats prepared by the hired cook. The cook is a proud Viking progeny named Halvor who only prepars fish, fish, more fish, and grating black coffee. Mertyle, Boom's little sister, refuses to go the house, inventing one sickness after another so she wouldn't bear to go to school. Boom refuses to let the twister alter his soul and tries to carry on, but he still has to deal with his relatives's eccentricities, and with neighborhood bully Hurley Mump and his equally persecute-ish family.
Then one day, Boom is sent out to get fish for dinner. He brings haven a very odd fish salvaged from a reject seafood scuttle down at the docks. When he and Mertyle discover the fish is no fish, but a genuine, live merbaby, things start to get interesting...
For Teachers and Librarians:The inventor crafts a totally believable story around a idiosyncrasy twister, a grieving family...and...
