However, not only blood makes family, which is one of the precious truths to be gleaned from this sweet, sweet novel. There are only four human inhabitants, including her, on this small stretch, and none of them are blood-related. Keeper is a 10-year-old girl who lives along the coast of Texas on an isolated oyster shell road at the foot of a salt grass marsh and narrow beach. It's as if the heavens were aligned, which only increased my pleasure in the reading. In fact, it is a blue moon, the second full moon of a month, and I had just experienced a blue moon when I started reading this story. Another of my favorite objects, the full moon, is in play in this tale, too. I can happily say that it is a delightful read in which the possibility of mermaids and other magical occurrences capture your imagination and take it to a place of suspended belief. 'Being a big fan of mermaids and having a small collection of mermaid pieces, I was excited about reading Kathi Appelt's novel, Keeper. Kathi Appelt’s follow-up to The Underneath is a stunning, mysterious, and breathless tale of outgrowing fairytales just a little to late-and learning in the end that there is nothing more magical and mythical than love itself. But her boat is too small for the storm that is brewing on the horizon. So when this ten-year-old goes out looking for her mother, she heads right for the ocean and the sandbar where mermaids are known to gather. But, what if being born in the middle of the night, in the middle of the waves, isn’t so much about being part mermaid as it is about being the daughter of a woman who is unpredictable, wild, and uncommonly gorgeous, a woman who swam away when Keeper was three-a mermaid? That’s what Singe says and what Keeper believes. That’s what Keeper was told, and that’s what she believes.

Keeper was born in the ocean, like a dolphin, like a Minke whale-like a mermaid. Adrift in the ocean in search of mermaid, mother, and myth-a breathtaking, magical novel from Newbery Honoree and National Book Award finalist Kathi Appelt.

Keeper by Kathi Appelt