To Catch a Mermaid by Suzanne Selfors was a book that just about anyone could savor.  It was a book which contained a bit  of humor, a bit of mystery, with a bit of fantasy weaved in there.  Ms. Selfors created a  book about self-discovery and the feeling that comes from achieving a seemingly unreachable goal.

Boom Broom thinks his life can’t get any worse.   The nightmare all began for him  when his mother was swept away by a twister and his father locked himself in the attic, leaving Boom to care for his little sister Mertyle (who has acted out every possible sickness including spots, the common cold and even brain farts).   She did all of that just to avoid school.  Low on money,  Boom brings home a feisty, seaweed covered fish home which had been reject seafood market but when Boom puts it on the table, he and Mertyle find that it’s actually a living, breathing, foul-tempered merbaby.

Boom wants to use the creature to get rich, but Mertyle won’t hear of it.  She loves the mud-scented baby and wants to keep to herself.  But when strange things began to happen … one of those being Mertyle begins to grow a white fuzz all over her arms and legs … they realize that may not be possible.  The siblings soon rely on their viking housekeeper, Halvor and his secret society to navigate them to an almost unknown island where the fisherman probably caught the merbaby.  By the time they get to the island,  tt is midnight and they quickly fall asleep.  While they were all asleep the mother of the merbaby comes and takes away the fuzz on Mertyle .  The group then returns home and Boom and Mertyle’s father decides comes out of the attic and they all go on happy.

I enjoyed the book because Ms. Selfors made it so that you couldn’t tell what happened next. I also enjoyed how the author  used the humor in the story to her advantage because right during a sad part of the story she used humor to enlighten the story.

The moral of the story is that if you can find the will to do anything you can do anything.  Boom made a fantastic demonstration of that when he found the will to save his sister to care for his sister/family when he was still a child himself.  This week, I am going to find one selfless act and do it – I don’t know what it is yet but I will do it!