Seal Song

September 19, 2011
A strong sense of place, sinewy prose, and an unusual blend of workaday life and fairy tale dreaminess distinguish Spalding’s (Secret of the Dance) Pacific Northwest fantasy. Finn, the son of a salmon fisherman, befriends and rescues a seal, then wishes out loud for her to take human form. Sure enough, a solemn girl in a long dress named Sheila appears, and Finn’s family’s salmon fishing takes a turn for the better. When Finn dismisses Sheila’s warnings and ventures into a terrible storm (“You’re just scared of the sea,” he scoffs), she gives up her human form to save him. “Finn lay asleep on the shingle. Protecting him, like a velvet blanket, was the seal. A fall frost sparkled across her back.” The oil paintings by Milelli (The Art Room) are composed, mosaiclike, of planes of saturated color that mimic the play of light across the water and the faces of the fishermen. The sober reality of the tweed caps of the men on the docks and the cannery’s wooden buildings anchor the story’s magical elements in a particularly piquant way. Ages 4–8.

September 15, 2011

Finn, a fisherman's son, befriends a seal who becomes his selkie friend until she gives up her human life to rescue him in a storm. 

Drawing on the long tradition of selkie tales, Spalding (Solomon's Tree, 2002, etc.) weaves a new story set in a Canadian community where salmon fishermen use nets. Finn works with his father, but he finds time to swim and play, and he longs to hear a seal sing. After he frees one from a net and nurses it back to health, she not only sings, she turns into a girl, Sheila, who can live on land and be his best friend—just as he had wished. All goes well until he ignores her advice and rows into a storm. Sheila sings once more and slips back into the ocean to save him, but when selkies enter saltwater, they turned back into seals. The magical elements of this friendship story seem believable in context, and the bittersweet ending is appropriate. Within the third-person narration are lyrical passages summing up important story elements. The text is set on or opposite Milelli's dark, expressive oil paintings, which focus mainly on the characters, giving only a rough idea of their surroundings.

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January 1, 2012

Gr 2-4-Spalding has located her selkie story in the salmon fishing grounds of Canada. She tells of a boy who loves to swim with seals and rescues one from an old net. Soon after, Sheila, a stranger child, appears and befriends Finn, though she is oddly loathe to let saltwater touch her skin. After a time, Finn ventures out onto the water though Sheila warns him of a storm brewing. When he capsizes, she sacrifices her human form to save him. Milelli's oil paint illustrations do little to convey the magic Spalding tries to evoke. Angular, hard-edged swaths of color make both land- and seascapes sit heavily on the pages. The human figures pose stiffly and awkwardly, and when Finn is sitting in his skiff, supposedly buffeted by powerful winds, his hair is barely ruffled.-Miriam Lang Budin, Chappaqua Public Library, NY

Copyright 2012 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.