The Seal Children

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Book Summary Information

Book Reviews of The Seal Children

Book Review: review from gwales website
Summary: 5 Stars

Setting the scene in her home area of St David's, she weaves a convincing
tale around the ruined cottages of Maes y Mynydd, a stone's throw from her
own cottage, providing, through the generosity of her imaginary seal-woman,
the wherewithal for its 19th century inhabitants to leave their lives of
poverty and hardship and sail across the seas to the New World, as many
Welsh emigrants really did.

For Huw, the fisherman who falls in love with the maiden, only to lose her,
as all human husbands must, to the sound of the sea and the seals, there is
the added loss of his son Morlo who chooses to live with his mother beneath
the waves, once their gift has been made. Yet his daughter Ffion sails with
him from Fishguard Harbour, to a prosperous future made possible by a tiny
casket of lustrous pearls, tied with golden ribbons of kelp.

The lyrical verse-like qualities of the text rest at ease with the wistful
landscapes of the West Wales coastline, painted with that clarity and
attention to detail which make them instantly recognisable to the book's
local readers, and so compelling to first-time virtual visitors to these
fingers of gorse-lined land pulled sometimes gently, often savagely into the
open sea, as if by Huw's haunting music. These recurring landscapes, subtly
altered as the story unfolds, and brought alive by a flash of silver
scales, a cluster of lobster pots or a glimpse of scarlet Welsh flannel,
provide the perfect setting for this tale of one family's loss and loyalty,
and one community's old memories and new dreams, made possible by Morlo
and Ffion, the seal children.

Chris S. Stephens

Children's Books