This review is special to me because it's my first official kid's review of Miri Attwater and the Ocean's Secret!
Holly is in 3rd grade. She says, "I like mermaids and I loved the bubble world in the book."
I am so glad you enjoyed that part, Holly, because I really had fun dreaming up the underwater world of Kai Kaona. When I decided that mermaids were going to be mammals it created an obvious problem. If they were going to be hiding at the bottom of the ocean, how were they going to breathe?
I decided I needed some way to get oxygen from the ocean water. And, if I
could have the building walls themselves collecting oxygen, I could
have lots of area to do it with. Somewhere in there my imagination
landed on the idea of giant bubbles! (In the book, Fisk explains a little about how the bubbles work.)
Also, I wanted the mermaid world to be beautiful.
When I was about the same age as Holly, I started reading all of the Wizard of Oz books. (Okay, I think I was actually older than Holly when I started doing that. I was
not an early reader.) I was hoping that Dorothy would visit another place just as beautiful as the Emerald City. She never did. I think the only thing that came close was maybe where Glinda the good witch lived? But in any case the description was not any where detailed enough for me.
Another favorite of the books from the school library that I read over and over was Witches, Ghosts, and Goblins: A Spooky Search for Miranda's Cat. Oh, how I loved this book. Let me assure you, if I loved it, it was
not scary, in spite of its title. Aside from all the color pictures (remember, I said I wasn't an early reader!) I loved the description of the gem caverns that they traveled through. I loved this book so much I located a copy for my own kids and I was surprised to see that the description was only one or two lines! My imagination did a lot with those two lines.
So, all that to say, when I started dreaming up Kai Kaona, I wanted to make it the beautiful mystical world I longed to visit in books when I was a kid.
You can read the rest of Holly's review at
V.K. Finnish's blog where V.K. posts a regular feature "Reviewed by Kids."
Thanks Holly!
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