Alice Hoffman is the highly acclaimed author of over twenty novels for readers of all ages, including The World That We Knew, Illumination Night, Seventh Heaven, Practical Magic, Here on Earth, The Foretelling, Incantation, and, most recently, The Story Sisters and The Red Garden. Her previous novels for Scholastic Press are Aquamarine, which was made into a major motion picture, Indigo, Green Witch, and Green Angel, which Publishers Weekly, in a boxed, starred review, called "achingly lovely." She lives outside of Boston.
This slim offering finds Hoffman (Aquamarine) once again in mermaid mode. In landlocked Oak Grove where a flood years ago has made the townspeople so fearful of water that the local swimming pool stays drained 13-year-old Martha Glimmer mourns her mother's death and chafes under the disapproving ministrations of busybody neighbor Hildy Swoon. Martha's best friends Trevor and Eli McGill adopted brothers better known as Trout and Eel have problems of their own, including town gossip about their odd eating habits (salt water, raw tuna) and their webbed fingers and toes. After Hildy ruins Martha's prized possession, a shawl that had belonged to her mother, and the hydrophobic Mr. McGill repaints his sons' bedroom white (they preferred the "endless blue" of the sea), the three of them decide to run away. Broad clues point to the story's core secret, that Trout and Eel are the sons of a mermaid. An accomplished storyteller, Hoffman deftly interweaves themes of friendship, identity and the tension between family ties and freedom that adolescence inevitably brings ("I thought if you got too near to water, you would swim away," says Charlie McGill to his boys. They will, they assure him "But then we'll swim back"). However, the text has been stretched to fit the format of a novel, which may unfairly raise readers' expectations. Together with the sketchy characterizations and particularly the author's cool, dispassionate tone, the presentation may hamper readers' full pleasure in the tale. Ages 10-up. (Apr.) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
Gr 5-8-In the manner of a fairy tale, this story begins with a town that seems to be under a curse. Fifteen years ago, a flood devastated Oak Grove, and its inhabitants dammed up the creek so that water would never flow through the town again. Everyone is terrified of water except for motherless Martha Glimmer, 13, and her two best friends, Trevor "Trout" and Eli "Eel" McGill. The adopted brothers love sardines and saltwater, and their webbed fingers and toes reveal early on that they are the offspring of a mermaid. The book encompasses a wide knowledge of fairy-tale archetypes, such as the heroine who sets out on a quest for identity, the widowed father distracted by grief, the scheming would-be "wicked step-mother," the dead mother's talisman (a yellow silk shawl), and the companions with magical gifts. When Oak Grove is once again threatened by flood, the three water-lovers will (of course) be the town's salvation. Unfortunately, the beautiful, poetic phrases juxtapose sharply with tired idioms, and the omniscient, sometimes jarring tone distances readers from the text. While the story is more developed than the author's Aquamarine (Scholastic, 2001), it is strictly an additional purchase.-Farida S. Dowler, formerly at Bellevue Regional Library, WA Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
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