I Am a Meadow Mermaid

A sweeping golden-hued panorama on the endpapers of this large picture book transports readers immediately to a prairie location. But how can there be a mermaid here in this landlocked setting?

There is one, in the form of an imaginative little girl who dreams of being a “meadow mermaid”.

I play in puddles in the rain and lie in sprinklers in the sun.

My fingers feel best when they’re wrinkled like raisins.

I hear the sea in the roar of the wind and in the whisper of

a shell. I listen for the music of a mermaid a million miles away.

The spare but poetic text is accompanied by pictures long on atmosphere but short on fine detail. Together, they move the reader past the here-and-now fields of grass to conjure a sense of waves tossing on the sea.

A meeting with second dreamy child amplifies the ocean metaphor for this other girl has different hopes. The two talk of seeking an island with a buried treasure and of all the many creatures that live underwater.

The adventure described in the story does not seem to take more than a day, and it is not long before the girls are saying goodbye to each other.

At the end of a sea-swept day, I dive into blankets,

ready to dream of salty-sweet adventures in my deep-blue

meadow with my brand-new friend…

…Milla, the prairie pirate.

Kallie George is a writer and educator who lives in British Columbia. She obviously knows the sea but seems to have a strong affinity for the open plains, too, and always wanted to be a mermaid.

Elly MacKay is an illustrator and paper artist with a number of books to her credit. Here, her lush images are made by photographing paper dioramas. A colour palette of orange, yellow and brown is interrupted the night scenes which are bathed in blue and grey. Readers are definitely tied to the land throughout. It is the play of the girls, stretching, bending and leaping in reaching for water that makes readers comprehend the dream of oceans.

There is one especially stunning image of the would-be mermaid with her dark eyes and wavy hair, crowned with a wreath and peering out from a patch of “coral-coloured flowers”. It is repeated on the hard cover of the book but will unfortunately be covered when libraries do that thing of laminating and taping the paper jacket which bears a different illustration over top.

I Am A Meadow Mermaid is a worthwhile addition to story time collections for librarians and teachers.