From Publishers Weekly
The illustrious author and artist have created a haunting version of the Scottish folktale about the selkie. Newbery Medalist Cooper tells the story of a man who falls in love with a woman; she becomes a seal as she swims away. A year later, he steals her sealskin so she cannot leave and makes her his bride. The tale focuses on the longing of the selkie, Mairi, a "wild creature" who goes "back to the wild, in the end." When Mairi accidentally finds out where her husband hid her sealskin, she tells her children she must leave them because she also has children in the sea. Her daughter understands, saying, "You must go to them. It's their turn." The lyrical text weaves a tale of sweeping dimension; this is storytelling at its finest. Particularly lovely are Hutton's sensitive and muted watercolors, which successfully capture the mood evoked by the book's opening and closing sentence: "The islands rise green out of the sea, where the waves roam over the grey rocks, and strange things may happen there."
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From School Library Journal
Kindergarten-Grade 3 Both Mordicai Gerstein (The Seal Mother Dial, 1986) and Susan Cooper have retold the folktale of the Selkie who is forced to live among mortals. In Cooper's version, Donallan falls in love with one of three beautiful naked selkie-maidens that he sees sitting on the rocks. Stealing her sealskin so that she cannot return to the sea, he marries her. Although she bears his five children, whom she loves deeply, she longs for her home and her family in the sea. At last she learns where her skin is hidden and, putting it on, dives joyously into the waves. But every year, Donallan and his children go down to the sea and when they return, there is "a look on their faces like sunlight." Cooper retells this ancient folktale from the coastal regions of Ireland and Scotland in a simple, direct storybook style, which, while lacking some of the exquisite beauty and flowing language of an Eva LaGalliene, still captures enough of the essence to appeal to young readers. Hutton's watercolors match and extend Cooper's narrative in the best traditional "picture story book" fashion, and if both fall slightly short of the haunting and timeless quality possible in such a tale, they still create a story to capture and hold the young. Yet Gerstein's book, grounded in familial love, is the more appealing version. Constance A. Mellon, Department of Library & Information Studies, East Carolina University , Greenville, N.C.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
