The Tail of Emily Windsnap

It’s MerMay! And I’d like to kick it off by recommending one of my favourite mermaid books of all time!

Emily Windsnap is a twelve-year-old girl who discovers she is part-mermaid when her legs transform into a tail the first time she submerges herself in water. This discovery leads her to a fantastical underwater world where she meets her mermaid best friend, Shona Silkfin, goes to mermaid school, explores sunken shipwrecks, and even manages to break her long-lost merman father out of an underwater prison!

I found this at the Scholastic Book Fair and absolutely fell in love with it! It has everything a middle-grade mermaid story could want and more, and I still enjoy re-reading it as an adult. It was originally a trilogy, but at some show more point since deciding to end the series there, the author changed her mind and continued writing about Emily’s adventures, so now there are 9 books and I am almost caught up! The whole series is a lot of fun, full of magic, friendship, and mythical creatures — plus the covers are all really pretty! show less

This is an entertaining, original fairytale for all those who haven’t been satisfied since Ariel. Emily’s character is feisty, but kind. She’s teased at school for her strange behavior around water, but she stands up to the snarky girls and in the end, also stands her ground with King Neptune. More than anything she just wants to find the father who stole her mother’s heart 12 years ago.

Emily’s mother has kept her out of the water her whole life, but when her PE class takes up swimming, she’s finally going to get the chance. In the water, it feels like her legs are fusing. She freaks out, but takes note. Since she and her mom live on a boat, she goes into the water again late one night. She grows a fishtail and meets another show more mermaid. The two become best friends and begin to wonder about the mystery surrounding Emily’s father. It’s forbidden and punishable for merpeople to mingle with humans, but Shona is sure she has heard the name Windsnap before. Once Emily realizes her father did not abandon her, she becomes obsessed with finding him. It won’t be easy. He’s a merman after all, and Neptune is not a fan of humans.

There’s just enough conflict to keep the reader invested and rooting for the heroine. The fairytale quality is refreshing in today’s flooded dysfunctional book market. Based on the number of books in this series, you can bet kids will be back for more. Recommended. show less

Read about this series on a magazine back when I was 10 or something. Sounded fucking fantastic. And for a ONE-DECADE WAIT it didn't disappoint. Love that we jump right into the story from the start. It was pretty fast-paced for the entire book, some times even rushed. But for my short attention span that's exactly what I needed. Hoping we see more of Emily's mom in the next book, I feel so sorry for her, she was brain-washed and didn't have much chance to have a personality in this, like Hawkeye in the first Avengers movie.

I wish we could've learnt more about this version of mermaid culture, but maybe that is what the next books are for.
The main character isn't perfect, she felt real.

The Tail of Emily Windsnap by Liz Kessler is the first of a five book middle grade fantasy series. Emily and her mum live on a boat off the coast of an English town. Though she lives over water, she's only now facing her first swim lesson. And it doesn't go anything like she expected or feared.

In fact, it turns out that Emily Windsnap (the name should be clue enough, but more on that later) is half mermaid. She and her mother's memories have been wiped, including the truth as to what happened to Emily's father. He's not the deadbeat dad everyone has told her.

This first book serves an introduction to the world of the merfolk and their relationship to human (at least English) society. It also gives a chance for Emily to reunite her family show more and learn the basics of her powers as a mermaid.

But in audio form it's also rather twee. In all fairness there's a long literary tradition in Britain of characters having names that match their character traits or jobs or whatnot. Heck, even British society itself did that (think of the family names Smith, Carpenter, Butcher, etc). In children's entertainment we get twee names like Windsnap or Mousling.

I bring up Angelina "Ballerina" Mousling because the audiobook was recorded by Finty Williams, the voice of Angelina Ballerina from the original animated series that ran from 2001-2007. Having her read Emily Windsnap's adventures makes is damn near impossible to not compare Emily's world and friends to Angelina's. show less

Except for the fact that she is a mermaid, Emily Windsnap is just like every other middle school girl on the planet: she is self-conscious, has to deal with snooty girls, and is exploring new friendships. Emily and her mother live on a houseboat, and she has no father in the picture. Emily has a shocking discovery on the first day of seventh grade during her first ever swim lesson. She has never been fully submerged in water, mainly because her mother is afraid of water (yet they live on a houseboat). In the pool, her legs begin to fuse together to form a tail. After swimming amazingly, she gets out of the pool before her new secret can be discovered. Emily is accused of being a show-off by the mean girl. The experience continues to show more baffle her, and she goes to the sea that night to see if it will happen again. It does, and she meets another mermaid, Shona, who proves to be just “swishy.” Shona shows her a whole different world including school, sunken ships, and the harsh laws of King Neptune.

Emily eventually finds out that her mother was once married to a merman named Jake, and that the lighthouse keeper, Mr. Beeston, is a spy working for King Neptune. Mr. Beeston has been wiping the mother’s memory every week in the guise of having tea. The mom eventually gets her memories back, and Emily tries to rescue her father in a climactic chapter. They are eventually given a trial, and King Neptune agrees that love is valuable, even if it is between a human and merman. Emily gets to see her parents reunited.

This book is another example of why fantasy fiction can be so valuable to kids. Even though fantastical things go on, these books still explore issues that matter to kids. They can identify with the problems she has, and they can also use their imagination to consider what being a mermaid might be like. I really enjoyed this book and will recommend it to any seventh grade girl. It is the first in a series. Illustrated by Sarah Gibb with very pretty watercolor-type images of mermaids and other sea creatures. show less

The premise is so promising as to make me envious: A girl who lives on a houseboat but has never swum -- the result of her mother's apparent lifetime fear of water -- discovers that when she is submerged in water, she transforms into a mermaid. This leads to a number of questions about her identity and her past, which her mother seems to have a very murky grasp of. Emily sets off on a quest to find out the truth, befriending another mermaid and generally upsetting her home life in order to discover the truth. As I read this to my daughter, I thrilled at the first half. The second half, however, falls completely apart in the way that some movies devolve into incoherent action sequences. And the more I read, the more I felt like the show more writing was merely mundane. My daughter enjoyed it, but we have since moved on to novels that she is just as interested in and are written with much better experience. It comes down to the investment of your time, and in the end, the Emily Windsnap series appears not to be worth it for me. show less