There’s No Such Thing As...Mermaids

PreS-K–Rowland and Halford are a dynamic duo, and their sweet seek-and-find stories that center around magical creatures are tremendous fun for young tots. Featuring a cast of diverse background characters, the narrator sets out to prove mermaids exist when her older sister says they do not. Bright, vibrant artwork cohesively works with the text, which is expressive and varying in size to emphasize the narrator’s tone. A great assistance for adults reading to children, or children starting to read on their own, these literacy cues draw readers into the text as they try to find a mermaid. The use of repetition (“There’s no such thing as mermaids”) encourages early literacy and a soft rhyme scheme enhances patterning for young children. In her mermaid search, the narrator visits a stream, park, aquarium, fountain, lake, sea, shore, and river. The mermaid is carefully hidden in each richly imagined spread. Despite the incongruity of some locations, the breezy story works as it’s all about a mermaid—logistics do not matter in this fun package.