Emily Windsnap and the Siren's Secret
By Liz Kessler
Hi! Do you know any humans that turn into mermaids? Well, Emily Windsnap does! Her dad is a merman and her mom is a human. Her best friends are a mermaid, Shona, and a human who can turn into a merman (just like her!). His name is Aaron.
Neptune is the king of the ocean. He is not a fair king, in my opinion. He punishes people (like locking them up in prison) when they fail a job. Emily Windsnap failed a job once. It was terrible! Neptune has given her another job to unite humans and merpeople because humans were going to destroy a mertown. The human town that was going to destroy the mertown was called Brightport. The mertown that the humans were going to destroy was called Shiprock. That was where Emily was going to go to school, along with Aaron. Shona used to go to school there. All of Shona’s friends were excited to see her. When Shona introduced Emily to the other children, they all laughed and became friends with Emily, too.
When Emily had lived in Brightport, she didn’t know about mermaids (see, Neptune had punished her dad and put him in prison, so she had no idea he was a merman). She was going to start human school in the Fall and she was a little scared because someone there had bullied her. They made up and became friends in her last adventure, but Neptune had made everybody forget about that so she probably wouldn’t remember and would still bully her.
One day at Shiprock, Aaron was curious about a big rock that was up there. Unfortunately, Aaron’s leg got stuck and they weren’t supposed to be up there! Also unfortunately, Mrs. Sharktail caught them as humans instead of merpeople, so she banned them from ever coming back to the school because they were semi-mers. So, Emily got banned from the school and spent the next few days hanging out with Aaron.
Eventually, Emily made friends with Mandy (the bully) again because she figured out that when she touched hands with Aaron, it was mightier than Neptune (who had cast the memory spell), so Mandy remembered that they were once friends. So they became friends again.
Shona and Emily went out looking for the lost sirens. Now, there’s good news and bad news. Good news first: Emily found the sirens! Next, the bad news: they were trapped in an underwater well that you could go in, but not come out. And Emily was accidentally trapped down there forever.
Will Shona find Emily and get her out so they can get merpeople and humans closer together? Or will Emily and everybody who helped have to feel the angry wrath of Neptune – again? As I always say, read the book to find out!
I recommend this book to readers who love a good story. This is a great book (although you should probably read the earlier books in this series before this one)! This is also a good book for children in 3rd grade and over. If you have a child who loves mermaids, then maybe you could read this book aloud to her (or a younger sibling).
A few helpful things I like to say about the books I read:
“Run and Get Mom” (how I describe the scariness factor):
There were a few scary parts, but none were too scary.
“Yucky-Lovey Stuff” (how I describe the romance factor):
There was one part and it involved kissing, I have to warn you!
I give this book 5 wands.
It was amazing! Although I didn’t read the books before this one in this series, I bet it would have been even more amazing if I had read them! You can search the author of this book and find the other books in this series.
