Mermaid School

A super fishy tale with lots of illustrations to carry the story along the wavy way. This is a story about a magical school under the sea. It’s perfect for fans of school stories and it offers something a little different with its watery setting.

The story centres around Marnie Blue, a young mermaid who is about to start secondary mermaid school. She has a famous aunt who, of course is good at singing as presumably all successful mermaids are so she is a little worried about letting people know about her connections on her first day at school. Her Aunt had a bit of a troublesome reputation at the Lady Sealia Foam’s Mermaid school so Marnie has to try and swim her way through various tricky situations with teachers and classmates in the story.

There are classic friendship issues in the book and some very interesting teacher characters not least the headmistress herself - Miss Foam. She loves brushing her hair and looking into the mirror. There is some lovely gentle humour and lots of puns and really funny ideas about this underwater world. There’s lots of imaginative scenes which will make the reader smile-a pesky goldfish pet, an angry sea-horse who needs mucking out and a clam fish bed which actually sounds really comfortable.

The mixture of inserted pictures and mini images make the book easy to read and add something to this land beneath the sea.

There are some nods to traditional images of mermaids in there too and a proper page turner at the end thanks to a parallel plot involving Marnie’s aunt and a lost love. Never fear, there is a second book on the horizon, Mermaid School: The Clamshell Show.