DAUGHTERS OF THE SEA: MAY

 Author (last name first):
Lasky, Kathryn
Publisher, Date of Publication: 
Scholastic Press /2011
Grade Level/ or Age Level: 
6th- 12th
Classification: 
Fiction  

In  1898, 15-year-old May has always felt like she doesn't belong, She has grown up thinking she is the daughter of a lighthouse keeper who drinks a bit too much and his selfish and cruel wife. May has always wondered she can possibly be related to these people who seem so different than she is. Forced to stay home from school to nurse her mother's failing health, May feels a loneliness that threatens to swallow her whole. The sea seems to be calling her more strongly each day, even though her father has forbidden her from getting in the seawater. After her mother takes malicious delight in letting her know that she's actually adopted, May's lifelong feeling of being separate and disconnected suddenly starts to make sense. When she disobeys her parents' rules and takes her first moonlit swim in the waters off the coast, she discovers even more about herself i.e.May is a mermaid. 

She still has so many  questions that have gone unanswered: Where did she come from? Are there others like her? Her quest for answers takes her to the local library, a Harvard astronomer who's researching the Pleiades star formation. Hugh is so unlike the fishermen who flirt with May at town dances, he seems to come from a different world too. Will their love out last May's desire for the sea and all it's secrets?

Kathryn Lasky did a wonderful job tying her first daughters of the sea book (Hannah) into the story about May's life. However, I did feel the ending left too many unanswered questions and that the characters introduced in the middle of the book were forgotten. There is an AR test available for this book.

Reviewed By: Lila Davis (Night Circulation Manager at Midwestern State University)