Age 7-10

Mermaids in children’s fiction are almost always up against villains who want to exploit them in lucrative freak shows. Thora is half mermaid and half human (a young girl with scaly legs and a blow hole in her head), but she comes into conflict with a greedy entrepreneur who intends to make her mother an exhibit. With the help of his daughter and other friends, including the kindly, eccentric bachelor who adopted her, three oddball spinster sisters, a peacock and a rather improbably beneficent wind, Thora puts paid to the man’s avaricious plans. But this book is more than its plot. Johnson’s writing is witty and inventive, and the character of Thora, with her quirky logic, unusual skills and capacity to bring out the best in other children while putting bad adults properly in their place, is full of unexpectedness. A symptom of her adventurous early childhood, spending her first 10 years with her mother at sea, is that she makes malapropisms in human speech, although her utterances are ambitious. When she sees two octopuses fighting, she remarks: “Squid pro quo.” This is a book full of fun, with particular appeal for children who relish language and verbal jokes and are interested in precise meanings.

THORA by Gillian Johnson

(Hodder £6.99)

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