ARC Preview: Keeper by Kathi Appelt

 

Amazon Book Stats:

• Reading level: Ages 9-12
• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Atheneum (May 18, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1416950605
• ISBN-13: 978-1416950608
• Genre: children/tween fantasy?

 

Book Data

To ten-year-old Keeper, this moon is her chance to fix all that has gone wrong...and so much has gone wrong. But she knows who can make things right again: Meggie Marie, her mermaid mother who swam away when Keeper was just three. A blue moon calls the mermaids to gather at the sandbar, and that's exactly where she is headed -- in a small boat, in the middle of the night, with only her dog, BD (Best Dog), and a seagull named Captain.

When the riptide pulls at the boat, tugging her away from the shore and deep into the rough waters of the Gulf of Mexico, panic sets in, and the fairy tales that lured her out there go tumbling into the waves. Maybe the blue moon isn't magic and maybe the sandbar won't sparkle with mermaids and maybe -- Oh, no..."Maybe" is just too difficult to bear. Kathi Appelt follows up to her New York Times bestseller, The Underneath, with a tale that will pull right at your very core -- stronger than moon currents -- capturing the crash and echo of the waves and the dark magic of the ocean.

About the Author

Kathi Appelt, at the age of seven, stumbled and fell into an alligator pit in San Antonio, Texas, a place where there should be no alligators or alligator pits. Fortunately she was a lot bigger than the alligator, who was more scared of her than she was of it!

She is a member of the faculty at Vermont College's Master of Fine Arts program and occasionally teaches creative writing at Texas A&M University. She has two grown children, and lives in Texas with her husband and four cats. Her debut novel, The Underneath, was a National Book Award finalist and a Newbery Honor book.  

You can find the author on Goodreads, and her website.

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Amazon pre-purchasing links for US/UK/Canada.

This book was sent via Shelf Awareness by the publisher Atheneum. A big thanks to both.

Review coming soon.