I’m a little late linking this time, but I’ve linked my post on the Borrowers to the KidLit Book Hop. There’s a whole bunch of posts on kid lit books just waiting to explore!

The Brides of Rollrock Island by Margo Lanagan.

Here is a darkly beautiful, multigenerational tale of selkies and the human families they marry into from the author of Tender Morsels. The narrative voice switches among a number of characters, with the notable exception of the selkies themselves. We hear from the sons and husbands of the selkie brides, from the sisters and wives of men gone seal-mad, and from the witch, Miskaella Prout, who runs a business of producing seal women for would-be suitors. Rollrock becomes an island of human men and selkie women over the course of a generation. All of the many narrators come to life, their reasoning believable, the tale carried from one to another to form a beautiful and yet monstrous whole. For the myths never really say that the selkie women are never given a choice. Their husbands and sons adore them – and yet their skins must be hidden, as they would return to the sea if they could. Lanagan tells a story of magic with a look at the meaning of love that’s highly relevant today.