THE FINTASTICAL TALES OF MARI A. FISCH #1

A young mermaid joins the human world.

Mari, the nonconforming, adventurous daughter of King Triton and Queen Sirena, shares many similarities with Disney’s Ariel—though Mari’s initially afraid of the ocean’s surface. (Ariel doesn’t appear in the book.) Mari gets wrapped up in her creative projects, which range from choreographing dances for crabs to painting portraits of her hundreds of extended family members. Mari’s sister Coral dubs her “odd,” but when Mari releases a dolphin calf from a mesh net, her proud parents send her on an important mission: to travel to the human world to find out why the waters are increasingly polluted with plastic. In a painless metamorphosis, Mari trades in her fins for legs and dubs herself Mari A. Fisch. Accompanied by her father’s adviser, Blub, a blobfish turned bulldog, Mari moves in with a human family living in Florida who think she’s an exchange student from Finland. Mari campaigns against the use of plastic while navigating complex social dynamics at her new school and learning that the most popular kids don’t always make the best friends. The dozen brief, clearly written chapters each end on a minor cliffhanger and, often, a note of encouragement (“You’ve read four chapters. Amazing!”). The naïve Mari’s unfamiliarity with human words and concepts adds bits of humor. Mari appears brown-skinned in the black-and-white cartoon art; other characters vary in skin tone.

An earnest introduction to environmentalism for burgeoning chapter-book readers.