![]() ![]() The ship appears and disappears only at certain times of day-growing fainter each time. The cover photo is one that I took for the header for the Facebook event for the event that I led.Emily Windsnap finds herself caught between worlds in a dramatic new episode of the New York Times best-selling series.Ī field trip to a mysterious island quickly turns into an adventure when Emily Windsnap and Aaron discover a secret lookout point from which they spot a ghostly ship that no one else seems to be able to see. It is an independent, honest review by a reader. This review is not endorsed by Liz Kessler, Finty Williams, Listening Library, or Penguin Random House. The link attached to the cover photo will take you to that version. The audio CDs are no longer in print, but Penguin Random House has a digital version of the audiobook available. The book was originally published in 2004. More on that book when I have finished it. ![]() I’ve been listening these past few weeks to Finty Williams’ reading of the second book in the series, Emily Windsnap and the Monster from the Deep, and though quite different from the first book, it too is proving fun while still tackling more challenging ideas. This book is worth your time, with just enough meat and just enough innocence. I think Finty Williams improved my experience of this book with her personable representation of the first-person narration by Emily and the memorable voices that she gives each other character.Īll of this to say: Don’t let the pastel covers, shine, and swishy tails mislead you. All this sounds like a life about which I could daydream, and I could have probably happily read about life in Brightport even without the added drama and excitement of merpeople. The lighthouse keeper comes over ever Sunday for tea. Emily and her mother live on a moored boat in their seaside town, her mother working in the nearby bookshop. This is a delightfully British setting (enhanced in my reading probably by Williams’ accent, but Kessler too is British and hers is the dialogue). This is a book in which a girl is bullied and ultimately decides that she is comfortable and proud of herself as she is and stands up (or swims up) proudly before her bully. Emily and Shona wrestle with what is owed to a friend and with what their friendship means to each other. Emily finds a friend outside of school in Shona, a mermaid who likewise feels isolated from her classmates, who resent the teacher’s appreciation of Shona that Shona wins through her dedication to her classes. Emily has just started at a new school, Brightport High (she’s in Year Seven, approximately America’s 6 th grade), but she has been struggling to make friends, one of the more influential girls at the school leading others away from Emily because Emily accidentally got Mandy in trouble with her parents. This is a story about friendship and finding friends and the promises of friendship. I read this at first as a metaphor for interracial marriages, but its lessons could just as easily be applied to homosexual marriages (as I write this, the US Supreme Court is hearing arguments for and against allowing employment discriminating based on sexual orientation and/or gender identity) in the story, of course, it is a merperson and a human SPOILER ALERT (in this case, a woman and a merman, twisting Hans Christian Anderson’s “Little Mermaid” tale type). This was a call against making non-traditional marriages illegal. I don’t hardly remember any mention of school-aged boys, human or merperson. Romance is a thing in this first novel left to the adults, which was refreshing. This was a story of the power of love: familial, romantic, and platonic. This was a good mystery, which I failed to solve entirely (I did solve pieces of it). I didn’t find any available copies of the printed book at my local libraries, but I came home with a copy of the audiobook, read by the appropriately named Finty Williams. I had always dismissed this book and this series as too fluffy to try, one of those that I would find too juvenile to be enjoyable, being well past the age of Kessler’s intended audience-or too girly, too concerned with the little dramas of middle school and flirtation, but a recent event for work sent me scurrying to quickly read it to be prepared to lead a discussion.
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