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asakiyumeTwo 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 aftertroisoiseaux 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:
And then later:
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 whytroisoiseaux remembers it fondly.
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.
no subject
Date: 2025-07-16 01:15 pm (UTC)And yeah, the parents did feel young!