Books, Babies, and Bows reviews the children's fantasy Miri Attwater and the Ocean's Secret

What does an octopus have to do with mermaids? Read Miri Attwater and the Ocean's Secret and find out!

When I came up with the idea to write a book about a girl who didn't know she was a mermaid, my intention was to write a book that was pure fantasy.

But I discovered something about myself.

If I'm creating the magical world, it won't ring true to me unless it follows the principals of science. I guess that by the time you get a PhD in biology, science is too deeply ingrained in your DNA to deny it.

While I had lots of fun researching and imagining all the fantasy science in Miri's world, there was always that nagging fear in the back of my mind. Is all this fantasy science going to be believable to other scientists?

Yes, even someone with a PhD has a fear of looking stupid. :)

So I am thrilled about the review just posted at Books, Babies, and Bows! Jenny is a scientist and she gets it! She really gets it! (And she doesn't think I'm stupid or anything.)

From her five star review posted on her blog, Amazon, and Goodreads:
What I absolutely love about this book is how the author uses scientific facts to create a rule system for this "magical" world. You learn about how a mermaid changes from legs to fins in a way that makes it believable and magical all in the same breath. 

Read the rest of Jenny's review of Miri Attwater and the Ocean's Secret at Books, Babies, and Bows. And while you're there, check out her lovely series on 30 books of Kindness.

Don't forget, you can now buy an ebook copy Miri Attwater and the Ocean's Secret at all of these major retailers.

Amazon          Kobo          Barnes & Noble          itunes/ibooks        Sony                    diesel

Happy Reading!

Book 2 has a title! Miri Attwater and All That Glitters

Gold nugget

Book 2 has a title!

Miri Attwater 

and 

All that Glitters

So what glitters? Is all that glitters gold?

Gold is a pure element, which means all the atoms in a nugget of gold are the same. Chemists abbreviate gold with its chemical symbol Au. In it's pure form before it's been polished, gold doesn't really glitter. In fact, it's kind of dull.

Pyrite

Pyrite, though, glitters a lot! Pyrite is sometimes even found in the same types of formations as gold. It's shiny appearance has given it the nickname "fool's gold." 

But pyrite isn't gold at all! It is only iron and sulfur combined together to form a compound called iron sulfide. Chemists write its name FeS_{2 .}

_{It is sure has fooled a lot of hopeful gold diggers!}

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A kid's review of Miri Attwater the the Ocean's Secret

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.

Link to a gorgeous commemorative pop-up book

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!

Do fish really come in that color? Yep, really!

Photo By Adrian Pingstone, Wikimedia Commons

This is a photo of a yellow tang, like Miri saw at the aquarium park. See the tiny white spot at the base of its tail? That's the piece of bone that is as sharp as a surgeons scalpel! Another name for tang is surgeonfish.

When I went snorkeling for the first time off the Big Island of Hawaii, we looked down on the rocks in the water and noticed bright yellow stripes. We thought it was really nice of the local swimmers to paint them so  newcomers would know the best place to enter the water. But when we got in, the "stripes" swam away! They were a bunch of yellow tangs! They were so bright that they seemed to glow like the yellow stripes on the road at night.

The aquarium wasn't the only place Miri saw Yellow Tangs. Can you remember another place she saw them?

A reader asked if I have a preview of the cover of Book 2. Sadly, I do not. I'll tell you what I do have, though. And excerpt of Book 2 coming next week! So don't take your eyes off this blog!

Speaking of watching the blog, usually I would say to sign up with the Followers gadget in the right side bar so you won't miss any posts. But the official gadget provided by Blogger does not seem to be working. From my search of the forums, lots of people seem to be having trouble with this. I apologize, but if the gadget kicks you off the Followers list, please sign back up.