Real Mermaids Don't Wear Toe Rings

Description: Fourteen-year-old Jade feels like a freak-of-nature when she finally gets her first period while trying on an XL tankini at the mall. But "freak-of-nature" takes on a whole new meaning when raging hormones bring on another metamorphosis--complete with scales and a tail.

Brief description:

HÉLÈNE BOUDREAU believes mermaids are just as plausible as giant squids, flying fish or electric eels. She now writes fiction and non-fiction for kids from her land-locked home in Ontario, Canada. Her first book of this series, Real Mermaids Don't Wear Toe Rings, was a 2011 SCBWI Crystal Kite Award finalist. www.heleneboudreau.com

Review Quotes: "Jade is pretty certain that she has just experienced the most humiliating moment ever: when she gets her first period in the mall, she has to enlist her dad for help, since her mom disappeared a year ago. That's nothing compared to later that night, though, when she sprouts a tail in the bath, and her father explains to her that her mom is a mermaid who petitioned to become human. No one was sure how their offspring would develop, but Jade's tail growth pretty much cinches her mermaid status. She quickly decides to hide her condition from her hunky new crush, but she will use her new abilities to find her missing mother, who was abducted in hopes that she would tell imprisoned merfolk the secret of her conversion so that they might follow suit. Despite the jocular title, there's a hefty dose of darkness in the fantasy, especially surrounding Jade's mother's savage kidnapping and the physical torments of her transformation. On the other hand, Jade's tone is an accessible mix of bluster, insecurity, and sincerity, and the story makes menstrual embarrassment, mermaid abductions, and true (pesco-sapien) love all simultaneously plausible and deserving of reader sympathy. In true young-teen fashion, everything is exclamation-point-style dramatic, from the horrific change from mermaid to human to Jade's emphatic assertions about trying on bathing suits. Offer this quirky novel to readers who love mermaids but wish that they were occasionally less flowy and perfect and more . . . real." -- Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books