The Little Mermaid / Metaphrog

4 out of 5 stars

The Little Mermaid lives deep under the ocean and longs to see the world above. When at last she is allowed to rise to the surface at age fifteen, she falls in love with a young prince. In order to become a human and to be with him, she makes a dangerous pact with the Sea Witch.

This is the ultimate Mermaid tale—the one that got the ball rolling, so to speak. Having just re-read a bunch of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales, this story was very fresh in my mind. I headed into this graphic novel unsure of which version I was getting, HCA’s or Disney’s. I am happy to report that it was very true to the Andersen version.

The artwork was beautiful and I would be happy to recommend it to all ages of reader. I remember reading a comic book version of this tale as a child and being very scared by the Sea Witch. In this version, she is not nearly so scary in my opinion, but I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing. Bad people don’t necessarily look bad and that’s a valuable lesson to learn.

I was struck by the fact that the Little Mermaid is only 15 years old, and that’s in a species that lives to be 300. She is so young to be making these life changing decisions! I mean, who among us is married to the person we were in love with at 15? Not very many!

Read for my 2019 MerMay Project, which is getting an early start because I’ll be on vacation for half of the month of May.