Wednesday reading: The Tale of Emily Windsnap

[asakiyume]

Two weeks running with posting about reading on Wednesday, whohoo! ... It won't happen again for a while.


The Tail of Emily Windsnap, by Liz Kessler

I wanted to read this after troisoiseaux recalled loving it as a kid and enjoyed it on a reread. I was intrigued by her description of Emily’s starcrossed parents’ romance and Emily’s needing to rescue her father from mer-prison (which is only half the story; the other half is Emily discovering she turns into a mermaid in water, meeting a mergirl who can be her best friend, and learning about mer-school, etc., while meanwhile managing her mother and babysitter and the mean girl at human school).

When I read a middle grade or YA book that I haven’t read when I was the target age, it’s always like there are two of me reading it: me at my current age and me at the target age. Several times I’ve had the experience of thinking, I would have loved this aspect of the story at the target age, but now, not so much. But weirdly, with The Tail of Emily Windsnap, I had the opposite experience, where there were things that child me would have frowned at that adult me was more tolerant of.

Namely, child me would have been highly disappointed that mer-life is essentially like human-life, maybe a bit more boring (e.g., school classes are in things like Beauty and Deportment, and Emily’s nascent best friend Shona wants to be hairbrush monitor—age-appropriate Asakiyume shakes her head! Hairbrush monitor?! But adult me thinks it’s kind of amusing.) Same with mermaid electronics, like the splishometer (an underwater Fitbit). Child Asakiyume is having none of that! But adult Asakiyume appreciates the imagination behind coming up with undersea equivalents for things.

troisoiseaux talked about the descriptions of what it feels like to swim as a mermaid, and those really are beautiful. From the very beginning:

As I held my breath and swam deeper, the silence of the water surrounded me and called to me, drawing my body through its creamy calm.

And then later:

My head slipped easily below the surface. Suddenly I was an eagle, an airplane, a dolphin—gliding through the water for the sheer pleasure of it

And the descriptions of underwater places, of fish and shipwrecks, are beautiful too.

One thing that adult me found bemusing rather than amusing was how very dense Emily was. I asked myself: would I have found her this dense if I were reading as a child? And I think yes? The child protagonists in the books I used to read would have picked up on the clues that the author leaves for the readers to find but that Emily somehow misses. Example: When Shona and Emily first meet, Shona tells her how wayward humans often have to have their memories wiped, and this comes up again later, when Emily hears more about human-merfolk interaction, including about the romance between a merman with the last name of Windsnap and a human woman who had a baby exactly as many years ago as Emily is old. And yet when Emily goes home and asks her mother about her father and her mother can’t remember anything about him, she doesn’t stop and think it might be due to memory wiping. And later she asks the creepy old lighthouse keeper whom she’s always had a bad feeling about if he knows anything about her father, and he tells her a cock-and-bull story about an irresponsible guy—and even messes up the details of his made-up story, which Emily notices—but still Emily believes it. Why, Emily? Why?

The focus on best friends (having one, being one, and what that entails) was also a little uncomfortable for me, even though I know this is a stock feature in many middle grade books. I was happy, as a kid, with books in which a loner made a friend: the loner and the new friend would bond over something none of the other kids thought was important but that the two of them both valued. I feel like The Tail of Emily Windsnap is targeted more toward kids who feel perfectly at home with the interests and attitudes of their peers and so are looking not so much for someone to share things with as for someone with that extra bit of devotion to offer. But I guess sharing experiences is another way to bond, and Shona and Emily share adventures, so … well, I have no conclusion on this. Just musing.

The tl;dr of this is that I thought it was a fun, imaginative adventure story, and I can understand why troisoiseaux remembers it fondly.

Comments

[troisoiseaux]

The focus on best friends (having one, being one, and what that entails) was also a little uncomfortable for me, even though I know this is a stock feature in many middle grade books.

One thing that struck me this time was the background friendship dynamics of the Human School parts— the "I used to be friends with this girl and then we had a friendship breakup and now she's mean" and "there's this new girl I'd like to be friends with" of it all rang true. But reading this as a kid, I did always get the sense that this was more of a book for... "normie"-er girls than the shier and nerdier audience of the type of MG/YA books that lirazel posted about classifying recently...?

The whole Mermaid School part of the world-building was SO disappointing to me as a child - hairbrush monitor??? - but I did find it more funny this time around.

Anyway! Glad you enjoyed it!

[asakiyume]

I did, and I appreciated something that I think you mentioned in your recent review, that the author does describe things in such a way that you can form your own opinions separate from Emily's (actually I think what you said was that she presents the mom sympathetically--I agree!) For example, Emily describes the reason Mandy's taken against her, and you know? It's a reasonable reason! It's also a totally natural mistake or slip for Emily to have made, though. That's childhood for you. Sometimes you find your way to reconciliation and sometimes not--and maybe that has a lot to do with personality, and yeah, maybe someone who develops a driving grudge isn't going to be a great long-term friend.

[troisoiseaux]

the author does describe things in such a way that you can form your own opinions separate from Emily's (actually I think what you said was that she presents the mom sympathetically--I agree!)

That wasn't my review, but I do co-sign it! (And now I'm super curious who did write that...) Actually, one of the things that also struck me this time was that Emily's parents felt so young— side effect of re-reading childhood MG books as an adult, I guess!

[asakiyume]

Huh! I just reread your review and yeah. Where did I get that idea? I did glance at a bunch of reviews on Goodreads, maybe there? Or ... IDK.

And yeah, the parents did feel young!

[asakiyume]

Also, re lirazel's classification/collection, those are all books I either never read or else read later in life (past the target age). I feel like Little Women is pretty across the board for those who like it? (i.e., both normie girls and nerd girls can enjoy it? ... I did not happen to enjoy Little Women; I think it felt too grown-up to child me, and I've just never managed to have a drive to read it since.)

I really like the category you outline in your comment on that post of family-oriented stories, like the Moffats and All of a Kind Family--definitely a thing in 20th century children's lit!

[sartorias]

I would have put that right down as a kid--hairbrush monitor!--but from your description I can see the humor and the whimsy that would have bypassed me then.

[asakiyume]

Oh me too! I would have been furious with the author for creating such a tiresome mer-society. Come ON! But I have more detachment now.

[osprey_archer]

I haven't read this yet! So I will wait to read your review until I have. Hold this space for further thoughts!

[asakiyume]

Understood, understood! When you're ready, the entry will be here.

[osprey_archer]

I have now finished The Tail of Emily Windsnap! And a lot of my opinions are the same as yours. I also wanted mer-society to be more alien from human society, and for the worldbuilding to be more thought-out in general. In particular it kept bothering me that they have all these stacks of paper under the sea. How! What kind of paper! What are they using to write that would actually stay on their paper-substitute while immersed in water?

I was so busy being bothered by this sort of thing that I didn't particularly notice that Emily was pretty thick, haha.

Because you'd mentioned the best friends thing in your letter, I was on the lookout for that, though, and I think that in MG books "best friends" can provide the same kind of motivation for otherwise irrational actions that "love at first sight" does in YA/adult books. Like, there's really no reason for Shona to be willing to help Emily break into a prison and thus potentially suffer life imprisonment herself. She's met Emily like five times! But Best Friendship is an accepted motivation for deranged levels of devotion in MG books.

And then at the end she gets banished to the mermaid/human interaction island with Emily, and she's super psyched to be going there with her best friend, because apparently there's no one and nothing at home she's sad to leave behind.

[asakiyume]

But Best Friendship is an accepted motivation for deranged levels of devotion in MG books. --I think you're absolutely right: it's an MG equivalent of love at first sight.

I have more thoughts about fanatical devotion, but I'll save them for a letter (assuming I remember--but if your letter touches on Best Friend-ism, I probably will).

And yeah, re: Shona! Not so much a complete person but a prop who exists to feed information, affection, and technical support to Emily. Though I guess for her part Shona gets from the relationship brand-new-person-who-doesn't-think-I'm-a-hairbrush nerd-and-for-whom-I'm-a-fountain-of-knowledge, so there's a little bit of reciprocation?

Maybe most middle-grade readers don't think about what Shona's leaving behind (although maybe some would?? After all, the whole story is about Emily bringing her family back together again)?

[osprey_archer]

I think I was approaching Best Friendism from a slightly different angle in my letter, but one that also touches on the devotion aspect.

Yeah, Shona is pretty much a prop, isn't she? She is getting something out of the relationship (looking cool in front of a dazzled outsider!) but not really enough to justify her descent into a life of crime for Emily.

But yeah, I think many middle grade readers wouldn't think about what Shona's leaving behind. I know that I, as a middle-grade reader, probably wouldn't have, just because we never see Shona's family or other friends on page. Since they're not mentioned, it wouldn't have occurred to me to intuit their existence.

[amaebi]

I haven't read the novel, and don't recall ever having seen or heard of it!

But your account of your reading is so engaging that it is a light in the world, in itself. Thanks!

[asakiyume]

It definitely had its charms! It had limitations--I wasn't fond of the emphasis on best-friend-ism, and there was a moment of emotional blackmail based on that--but it was imaginative, and I can see why lots of kids liked it (even though I think as a kid I probably would have bounced off it).