An introduction to the traditional Welsh folktale. I somehow hadn't heard of selkies before, but this book has made me curious about them. I would've given this book 5 stars, but I didn't like the art style of the illustrations. They're not very engaging. ( )

Has a few mild pictures of female nudity.

This story is based on the selkie folklore of Ireland and the British Isles. A selkie is a mythical creature who resembles a grey seal in the water but a human woman on land. A selkie is a mythical creature that resembles a grey seal in the water but a human woman on land. The old folktale goes that if a man falls in love with a selkie, he steals her seal skin when she is in human form and cannot return to the water. So she ends up becoming his wife and bears his children but always longs for the sea. "The Selkie Girl" is a familiar retelling of this tale. Donallan lives alone on the coast of what is either Ireland or Scotland and sees a beautiful selkie woman sitting on a rock. Determine to make her his wife, he steals her seal skin and she becomes his wife. They have five children together but she still longs to go back to ocean. I recommend this book because it's folklore from another culture but may be familiar to some audiences. When I read this story, I immediately thought of Hans Christian Anderson's "The Little Mermaid". There's the transformation of a water creature to a human but I think the selkie story has a more upbeat ending. This story is great for imaginative kids who have an interest in mythology and folklore. ( )

The selkie folklore of Scotland and Ireland is the basis (according to the dust-jacket blurb) for this engaging picture-book from Susan Cooper, acclaimed children's fantasist, and author of the classic Dark Is Rising Sequence. Following the story of a crofter named Donallan, and his efforts to win the beautiful selkie maiden he spies one day, dancing naked on the rocks in her human form, The Selkie Girl is a tale of love and trickery, and a wild creature's longing, despite all ties of land and motherhood, for her natural home.

I wish Cooper had given her source material for this one, as her telling felt far more Scottish to me - perhaps because I associate "crofters" with Scotland? - than Irish, and I would have liked to know from which tradition, and area, it hailed. Leaving that aside, I enjoyed the narrative, which had a poignancy that felt very fitting, for a story of a coerced marriage. I appreciated the fact that Cooper didn't elide some of the adult aspects of the story - the nakedness of the selkies, for instance, or the fact that the selkie already had children, in the sea - as this made the conclusion, in which it is the sea-children's "turn" with their mother, all the more poignant. Sadly, I don't think that Warwick Hutton's artwork really did justice to this story, or to Cooper's text - it felt a little too flat and unmoving to me, and not at all reminiscent of the eternally changing sea - and this detracted from my enjoyment (hence the three stars, rather than four). I much prefer Mordicai Gerstein's illustrations, in his similar title, The Seal Mother.

Still, this was an appealing book, for all that, and one I would recommend to young folklore enthusiasts, and to readers with an interest in selkie stories. ( )

A lovely version of the classic selkie myth told throughout the British Isles under various names and manifestations. Cooper lends her considerable talent to the writing and Hutton's illustrations are gorgeous and soft. ( )