Real Mermaids Don't Need High Heels

Written by Hélène Boudreau

Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
978-1-4022-6458-0
240 pp.
Ages 9+
Release February 2013

The cover of Real Mermaids Don't Need High Heels may suggest a grad or a prom but the story only has Jade and Cori entering their first year of high school so no need to jump ahead too far.  While the transition to high school includes the promise of lockers, going for lunch off school grounds and new freedoms, it is often fraught with any number of worries about responsibilities, relationships and expectations.  Couple those with the recent discovery of your mermaid nature, the return of your mother who all thought had drowned and a budding first love, and you'll know what Jade Baxter is experiencing.  Plus she has to pretend that her mother is her aunt, Tanti Natasha, and the mermaid daughter of jailed mer-people Finalin and Medora is her cousin Serena from Tonganesia (explaining her poor English language skills) which recently experienced a volcanic eruption.  Deception can be so imaginative.

"Every student at Tonganesia High brings a dog to school," I continued.  "Dogs are very sensitive to seismic shifts in the earth's crust.  Since Serena's village was at the base of an active volcano, the dogs act as alarms during the students' mile-long walk to school.  Not to mention, protecting everyone from Komodo dragon attacks through the dangerous rain forest." (pg. 24)

But with deception comes the need for secrecy, and secrecy abounds.  Jade learns that their underwater hockey coach Laurena, who is engaged to marry Daniel, head cook at Bridget's Diner, is a Webbed One, as is Bridget.  Like Serena, Luke and Jade's mom Michaela, they are humans who started out as mer.  Unfortunately, the Mermish Council is ordering the Webbed Ones back to the ocean, intending to enforce Tidal Law at the next supermoon (in nine days!), to help fight a revolt that intends to see all Freshies (like Finalin and Medora) freed from the Talisman Lake jail. 

Everything seems to be folly. In fact, it is.  Keeping their Webbed Ones from returning to the ocean becomes lunacy for Jade and her friends and family, as the pull of Tidal Law is impressively strong. There's the upcoming Fall Folly, the dance where the girls ask the boys, made difficult for Jade's second-guessing of her relationship with Luke.  And there Folly's Passage, the narrow channel that once connected the upper end of Talisman Lake to the Atlantic Ocean, and the cause of the legendary shipwreck of Fortune's Folly.  It too may be folly for those mer who aim to reach the ocean without detection by the Mermish Council so they may provide support for the uprising.

But folly can mask wisdom ("If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise" wrote poet William Blake) and the actions of Jade and her cohort in Real Mermaids Don't Need High Heels are always grounded in good intentions, even if things do go awry occasionally.  A slip of the tongue, an unexpected reveal of a tail, a misunderstanding.  However, one of the best features of Hélène Boudreau's Real Mermaids books is the weaving together of the multiple and sophisticated subplots into a satisfying and upbeat ending.  We know that life doesn't often have happy endings, but when a book is embedded with mer-people, first-love and the confusion of puberty and transitioning to high school, isn't it refreshing to put aside the expected angst and enjoy the pleasure of a story tied up beautifully in a glittery satin bow of turquoise and pink?

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For new readers to Hélène Boudreau's Real Mermaids series, links to reviews of her earlier books and our interview with her are provided here:

• Real Mermaids Don't Wear Toe Rings reviewed here February 21, 2013

• Real Mermaids Don't Hold Their Breath reviewed here February 22, 2013

• interview with author Hélène Boudreau as part of her blog tour, on February 23, 2013

Hélène Boudreau: Blog Tour and Author Interview

Hélène Boudreau

author 

of the recently released

Real Mermaids Don't Need High Heels
(Sourcebooks Jabberwocky, 2013)

and two previous Real Mermaids books

Real Mermaids Don't Wear Toe Rings (2010)

and

Real Mermaids Don't Hold Their Breath (2012)

graciously agreed to answer a few questions
for CanLit for LittleCanadians as part of her
blog tour for Real Mermaids Don't Need High Heels
(which I will review tomorrow)

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CLfLC: What compelled you to take mermaids from the Little Mermaid realm for little girls and move them into the middle grade and teen years of your books?

Hélène Boudreau: My main goal was to write an honest portrayal of what it’s like for a young girl when so many changes are happening in her body. Jade just happens to be a mermaid but she’s not so different from other girls her age. She’s wondering about boys, trying to figure out friendships, and seeing changes in her body. Though, in Jade’s case, make that BIG changes!

My own daughter is almost twelve and is at the precipice of entering those uncertain years of raging hormones and topsy-turvy emotions. I really wanted to write a fun story for her (and girls like her) to ease her into the land of zits, training bras and smelly armpits. The upside being that—no matter how hard puberty might get—at least she doesn’t have a TAIL!

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CLfLC: What kind of research did you do to help develop the mer characteristics and society?

Hélène Boudreau: The setting for my story is based on a small town near where I grew up in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. There is a boat canal, which connects the Atlantic Ocean to an inland fresh water lake, separated by a boat lock. I spent a lot of time researching the mechanism of the boat lock, water height, tides and salinity to really try to grasp how these varying conditions might affect the mers in my story.

I also researched a lot of theories on primordial development and the concepts of human evolution. My main focus was to make the magic as ‘believable’ as possible by basing it on scientific explanations (which I extrapolated on, of course).

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CLfLC: Why did you choose to make Jade a plus-size character?

Hélène Boudreau: I don’t think it was a conscious decision on my part but, when I started writing about Jade and getting to know her, her size just became part of her character, just like the color of her hair or her love of flip-flops.

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CLfLC: The voices of your early teen characters resonate well with thirteen- and fourteen-year-old girls. How do you manage to make Jade and her friends' voices sound so authentic?

Hélène Boudreau: Thank you! It thrills me to bits to hear you think so. As far as authenticity, it helps that I have young daughters and nieces, I suppose. I think for any type of character an author needs to immerse themselves in that role just like an actor researching a part. Reading lots of books, listening to popular music and watching movies for that age range, plus observing kids in that age group in real life all help but I think each character has their own emotional truth and staying true to that is key to writing authentic characters.

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CLfLC: Was it harder to write the first Real Mermaids book, with establishing the characters, the backgrounds, history and setting, or writing your newest Real Mermaids book, and having to find new ways to plot for your Real Mermaids and mers?

Hélène Boudreau: They are all hard! LOL Honestly, though, the first one was difficult for me because as you say, there is a lot of world-building and character development when you first delve into a story. I wrote and rewrote that first book many, many times trying to get it right because I knew I wanted it to develop into a series so it was important to lay the groundwork. That being said, each subsequent book is a little bit harder for me because I need to work within the confines of the previous books while growing the story in new, fresh directions. It’s all fun, though!

For more information about her books and news,
connect with Hélène Boudreau
through Website | Twitter | Facebook | Goodreads

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Many thanks to Hélène Boudreau for allowing
CanLit for LittleCanadians to participate in her
Real Mermaids Don't Need High Heels blog tour

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Look for my review of Real Mermaids Don't Need High Heels posting tomorrow here on CanLit for LittleCanadians

Real Mermaids Don't Wear Toe Rings

Written by Hélène Boudreau
Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
978-1-4022-4412-4
208 pp.
Ages 9+
2010

With the third book, Real Mermaids Don't Need High Heels, in Hélène Boudreau's Real Mermaids series scheduled for release this month and after meeting the lovely Hélène Boudreau at the TD Canadian Children's Book Awards in November, I realized it was time to explore this series of books. Shamefully, I must confess to "mermaid" prejudices which, like all prejudices, were completely unfounded. As a teacher-librarian who has a multitude of little girls asking me for princess and mermaid books, I expected Hélène Boudreau's books to be weakly plotted stories with pretty covers in pink and purple, perfect for ages 3-5. Nah uh. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Instead what I discovered is a series of perfect middle-grade reads with complex plotting and lots of "Aha!" moments as connections and revelations twist and enhance storylines. The covers may have beautiful shimmering tones of turquoise, green and pink but these are hardly Disney's mermaid books. And Hélène Boudreau always ends her Real Mermaids books with a recipe courtesy of one of the characters. (The chocolately treat in Real Mermaids Don't Wear Toe Rings has become a regular after-dinner dessert in our household.)

Real Mermaids Don't Wear Toe Rings introduces almost-fourteen-year-old Jade Baxter, a plus-size teen who lives with her engineer father in Port Toulouse, a town on the Atlantic Ocean. Jade's mother, Michaela, drowned at her Gran's cottage on Talisman Lake less than a year ago. Even though she has the support of her dad and her fashionista best friend, Cori, Jade is finding that going through puberty without a mom is awkward, if not farcical. Imagine getting your period (horrors) while trying on a bathing suit (least favourite shopping for most women) but being unable to tell your best friend because you'd lied about getting it two years earlier (peer pressure, you know) and having to meet your dad at the drug store to pick out an assortment of feminine hygiene products while the boy you've always crushed on, Luke Martin, is trying to chat you up. Oh wait, did I mention that when you get home to take a warm bath with some soothing Epsom salts, you fall asleep and have your legs morph into a tail? They may always tell tweenies that "it's wonderful being a girl" but let's face it: puberty sucks, and even more so for Jade.

      Rubbing my eyes, blinking away the sting, trying to get out, shocked by what I saw breaking through the surface of the water.
     Then, I was yelling for Dad, he was crashing through the door.
     And I had a tail. A shimmering, scale-covered, slimy, wet tail.
     Freak-of-nature suddenly took on a whole new meaning. (pg. 40)

Luckily Dad is working very hard to be both parents to Jade and is there for her, even having to share the startling news with her that Mom had been a mermaid too. The big question - how could her mom have drowned if she was a mermaid? - sadly has no answer. Sadder still is the fact that Jade cannot share any of this with Cori (who is currently very busy hanging out with snooty Lainey Chamberlain in the hopes of getting Mrs. Chamberlain to mentor her in fashion design) or Gran or Luke who surprisingly seems to be chattier to her than before he and his family had gone on a lengthy boating trip.

While taking a break by the canal and lock that link the lake with the ocean, a scuffle in the water has Jade connecting with her mother who tells Jade, in the strange language of sharp ringing sounds, that she is being held by Freshies, mer-people who have been jailed in freshwater Talisman Lake by the Mermish Council. Desperate to free her mother from the clutches of the Freshie leaders, Finalin and his wife Medora, Jade and her father learn everything and anything they can about mer-people in the hopes of bringing Michaela home.

I won't give too much away here, as I'll be reviewing Real Mermaids Don't Hold Their Breath and this month's new release, Real Mermaids Don't Need High Heels, in the next few days. Suffice it to say, the humour, the storylines, Jade's pure 14-year-old voice and a startling ending to Book 1 will have you reading the second book asap, just as I did. So do yourself a favour and order Books 1, 2 and 3 at the same time. It'll be worth it.