The Sea Man

The men aboard a 17th-century Dutch sailing ship encounter a mysterious merman in this brief but powerful work of historical fantasy for beginning chapter-book readers. Taking the aquatic stranger for a drowning human at first, the seaman of The Water Nix pull the merman from the sea, only to discover that he is half fish, caught in a fishing net. Although many of the superstitious sailors, led by the intolerant Henk, think only of killing the stranger, or profiting from him, Lieutenant Huiskemp and his cabin boy, Pieter, are intrigued and eventually sympathetic. Out of his element, the sea man's condition worsens, and the lieutenant is faced with a choice: follow his instinctive understanding that this prisoner is a sentient being, and show more free him, or watch this mystery of the deep die before his eyes...

I enjoyed The Sea Man immensely, finding the story both engrossing and thought-provoking, the writing itself beautiful, and the accompanying illustrations appealing. The way in which Jane Yolen explores the idea of humanity and humanness here, and the manner in which she weaves the theme of compassion and fellow-feeling into her tale, is striking. I really appreciated Lieutenant Huiskemp's musings about language and the soul, and how these are understood to be the things which truly set the human animal apart. It is by recognizing that the sea man has language, albeit one utterly alien to him, that the lieutenant first begins to understand that his captive is not a fish, but a being more like himself. If the recognition of language is the first step in this process, it reaches its culmination when Huiskemp glimpses the sea man's wife and baby daughter, and realizes how alike they are to his own wife and daughter, back on land.

As much as I enjoyed the story here, I also found the writing itself lovely. There were frequent moments when I had to stop and reread. Amongst them were these favorites:

"The sky's slate is now a soft night blue. Only one star is out, like punctuation to a sentence yet to be written."

"Pieter turns to him and, in a voice made old by truth, declares..."

"They are captive of Henk's story, lad. At night a tale has more command than any officer."

Yolen's well-written, well-told tale is paired very nicely with the black and white illustrations of Christopher Denise, an artist whose work has also appeared in the Redwall picture-books, as well as the beautiful The Wishing of Biddy Malone. I thought his style here, with pencil drawings featuring plenty of shading and detail, matched the ominous but wonder-filled tone of the tale quite well.

I'm very glad to have finally read this one, after many years of having it on my to-read shelf. It's a lovely, thoughtful work of fantasy for beginning chapter-book readers - a group who aren't always given the most thoughtful stories. I was tickled to learn from the author's afterword that it is based upon an account of an actual event, in which Dutch sailors claimed to have rescued a merman, in 1663. Despite the fantastical elements, I have therefore also added this to my historical fiction shelf, as it chronicles an event recorded in history. Highly recommended to young fantasy lovers, particularly those who enjoy stories of mermaids and mermen. show less