The Girl and the Mermaid

A title that quietly washes over you with meaning and heart and a sense of why it matters so much that we ensure that the next generation see shared stories and reading as an essential part of all of our lives: a way to make sense of the world around us, a way to spark imagination and share a sense of unexplored shores, most importantly, a way to cling onto connections that might otherwise be lost to the waves.

The Girl and the Mermaid opens with Alina and her granny who live together in a lighthouse Alina has been left to run. Having helped her granny in the day, Alina listens to her granny’s stories at night – but these too are slipping from her grasp. There is so much that is suggested here in just the first few pages that might resonate with some young readers (a role as a young carer, living with memory loss in relatives), but these sentiments are woven so gently that others may simply ease into enjoying the story.

Before we know it, we are pulled down to the depths of the ocean floor with Alina as she puts her faith in a mermaid to reveal a ‘well of stories old and new’. Here Alina can fill a story shell and return some of her granny’s stories to the surface and to the forefront of her granny’s mind. But in doing so Alina realises too the broader significance of sharing stories – that in doing so our worlds can be understood across the seas, and that these stories can bring us closer at times when words can’t be found or sense seems to be slipping.

A title brimming with empathy, with quiet and steadfast opportunities for representation, and with a wholehearted expression of the power of storytelling – which we should hold onto at all costs, this is a title worth sharing widely. Massini’s illustrations are the perfect accompaniment and just as integral in expressing the story as the words themselves – perhaps in turn offering a timely reminder that the arts in general (be that in words or pictures) must be kept in the light, just as Alina does with her granny’s stories.