Merry MerMay! MerMay is most known as an art challenge, where participants make a mermaid-themed piece of art every day based on prompts. Here are the
The Little Homo Sapiens Scientist by S.L. Huang
While mermaids may seem firmly in the fantasy genre, you can find them anywhere from YA contemporary novels like Breathe and Count Back from Ten by Natalia Sylvester to the mermaid horror books below to sci-fi, like this one. The Little Homo Sapiens Scientist is a dark, queer, reversed retelling of The Little Mermaid. Cadence is a scientist studying the Atargati, who are not mermaids…they’re just a lot like mermaids. When she starts to fall for one of them, though, she rescues them, returning them to the deep sea — but she can’t resist the siren song of that watery abyss. This completes task #5: Read a sci-fi novella.
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Oona by Kelly DiPucchio and Raissa Figueroa and Once Upon a Mermaid’s Tail by Beatrice Blue
I could not pick just one mermaid picture book for task #11: Read a picture book published in the last five years. As I mentioned above, mermaids are perfect subjects for picture books, and both of these are gorgeous examples. Oona is the first in a series following Oona and her friend Otto as they get into mischief. Once Upon a Mermaid’s Tail is an environmentalist story about a boy who takes home a tiny, beautiful creature only to find she gets weaker and weaker in a tank — he needs to return her to the ocean.
What’s your favorite mermaid book? Let’s chat in the comments!
Check out all the previous 2024 Read Harder posts here.
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