Mermania: The Little Book of Mermaids

Mermania: The Little Book of Mermaids
Rachel Federman

Over 200 pages of legends, spells, facts and mermaid crafts! Do you need a little more magic in your life? What about shimmer? Look no further. Mermania is here! Packed full of over 200 enchanting pages of legends, spells, and facts, plus mermaid-inspired recipes and crafts, Mermania: The Little Book of Mermaids is the ultimate compendium of all things mer-people and their mystical aquatic lore. Did you know?This is the year of the mermaid – The mer-man film The Shape of Water won Best Picture Oscar and Netflix’s live action The Little Mermaid streams this summer – with Disney and Universal hot on their heels*Mermaids had a heyday in Israel in 2009 and Zimbabwe in 2012, where they halted government works until beer and rituals were offered*Throughout history, everything from manatees and sea-cows to skate and seals have been mistaken for beautiful mermaids!*Mermaids are believed to cure asthma and earache, and to warn of danger Full of gorgeous full-colour illustrations and plenty of joyful whimsy throughout, Mermania includes everything you could ever want to know about these magical creatures, all in a gorgeous, covetable, iridescent package!

Copyright (#ulink_eb24aa78-c799-583f-a36e-618b559701f5)

HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)

First published by HarperCollinsPublishers in 2019

Copyright © HarperCollinsPublishers

Rachel Federman asserts her moral rights as the author of the text.

Illustrations by Laura Korzon

Cover and interior design by Jacqui Caulton

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Source ISBN 9780008358013

Ebook ISBN 9780008362799

Version 2019-08-20

Dedication (#ulink_f6164907-f5b8-5cba-9206-22ad8ad43c91)

For Wally & Petra –

shapeshifters who always

seem to know who they are

Contents

COVER (#u726fdbd6-2d6c-568a-8118-029203689a39)

TITLE PAGE (#litres_trial_promo)

COPYRIGHT (#ulink_3a2ce9ec-ec14-5118-8323-341fa775e146)

DEDICATION (#ulink_f4c8496c-c033-5af0-b1cb-42479e6d1886)

INTRODUCTION (#ulink_8a191997-e16b-553b-9333-10f0e9ede59f)

HISTORY (#ulink_bdbdc04b-a115-5706-9ef1-abef4a72c2ce)

MYTHOLOGY (#ulink_adad1729-eb6a-5e62-ba04-2530e838a884)

SCIENCE (#litres_trial_promo)

ART, LITERATURE & POPULAR CULTURE (#litres_trial_promo)

MERMAID SPELLS (#litres_trial_promo)

MERMAID-INSPIRED RECIPES (#litres_trial_promo)

MERMAID CRAFTS & ACTIVITIES (#litres_trial_promo)

MERMAID INSPIRATION (#litres_trial_promo)

BIBLIOGRAPHY (#litres_trial_promo)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS (#litres_trial_promo)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR & ILLUSTRATOR (#litres_trial_promo)

ABOUT THE PUBLISHER (#litres_trial_promo)

Always follow your

dreams,

NO MATTER HOW

unrealistic

others think they are.

Introduction (#ulink_19782a34-2fb2-5932-a01d-26a899f56622)

Mermaids belong to an enchanted realm. Their seascape is at once tantalizingly out of reach – even the greatest underwater diver must eventually come up for air – and achingly familiar, water being our first home.

From the Middle English word mere – meaning lake or sea – mermaids are ‘maids of the sea’, the stuff of legends, but at the same time ever-present in our modern world. From TV series to music videos, from children’s illustrated books to feminist magazines, graffiti, stamps, tattoos, young adult lit, and manga comics, to inspirational postcards and cosy fish-tailed blankets, it seems that wherever you turn, our oceanic alter egos are there. Sprung from ancient fish gods, reborn from the tragedy of forbidden love, combined with the seductive power of the half-bird sirens who sang to Odysseus, and a warning against temptation in the Middle Ages, today mermaids exist as everything from birthday party entertainment to a reclaimed site of political and particularly feminist power.

While we humans dream of being able to breathe underwater – and many a young child longs for the shiny scales of a multi-coloured tail of his or her own – throughout art and story, mermaids are seen yearning for life on land. A 2012 special on the Discovery Channel led viewers to believe that mermaids did in fact exist, a NYC parade near Mermaid Avenue celebrates the dazzling creatures on the Coney Island Boardwalk each year, a bronze statue in Copenhagen has been rebuilt after many attacks by vandals, and from as long ago as the Bronze Age these enchanted creatures have served as our muse.

Surely, part of the mermaid’s appeal is how they dramatize our own dilemma – feeling our animal selves to be immortal, something more than the transient beings that we are. Perhaps these magical sea creatures help us to access a place beyond our material existence. And given that most of the world’s oceans remain unexplored, how can we be sure they don’t really have a material existence themselves?

But perhaps their greatest effect on humans is the way mermaids remake our world. Their desire for a life on land helps us reimagine the one we already have. In their eyes, ordinary elements – air, feet, rain – take on a new hue, becoming extraordinary, even miraculous. Mermaids remind us that the realm to which we belong is enchanted too. Those who love the Earth, with its rising oceans, have increasingly embraced mermaids in their duality – as both harbingers of doom and agents of protection – to swim forward in the fight against climate change.