Bayou Magic: The Story of a Magical Summer with Mermaids

With her new friend, a bayou boy named Bear (who is the kind, generous sort of boy any adventure loving girl would want to be friends with!), Maddy explores the waterways around her grandmother’s home. But it is not just the vibrant natural world and the strong community of caring folk that makes this place home for Maddy. She’s part of an ancestral line of magical individuals–she can summon the fireflies to light the night, and even more magically, she can see Mama Watu, the beautiful mermaid who followed her many times great-grandmother on her terrible journey from Africa to slavery. Mama Watu invites Maddy to swim with her, deep underwater, and this part of truly magical part of the book will utterly delight any mermaid-loving reader!
There is a darker side to Maddy’s gift. She can sense when bad things are coming, and looking out over the sparkling waters of the gulf to the oil rig on the horizon, she feels danger threatening her beloved bayou. And disaster comes. When the Deepwater Oil rig explodes, Bear’s father, who worked there, is killed, and birds, fish, and dolphins covered with foul oil begin to wash up on the beach. If the oil reaches Bayou Bon Temps, all that Maddy has learned to love will be destroyed.
So she asks Mama Watu for help, and to her joy, she sees Mama Watu call other mermaids, scores of them, from the Gulf to come build a levee that will protect her bayou. It is a small miracle, and the bayou becomes an unspoiled refugee on the horribly damaged Gulf Coast. Maddy goes home to the city, knowing that she’ll have many summers to come down at the bayou, learning from her grandmother, and visiting Mama Watu. And even in the city, there is still firefly magic!

Though Maddy’s story is in general one of joy and hope, and the ending is a happy one for this particular bayou, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010 was a horrifying tragedy, and the descriptions of oiled wildlife in Bayou Magic are very upsetting (I confess I grew teary-eyed myself, even the second time through). Sadly, it’s still not possible to offer reassurance to a young reader that everything is all better now, because it isn’t, although efforts to set things right continue.
Don’t be put off by that sadness, though; this is a lovely, warm book, beautifully written, and full of beautiful magic that will delight the ten year old who would love to swim with mermaids, especially dreamy ten year old girls who have had older sisters squashing them all their lives!

I also highly recommend Jewell Parker Rhodes’ previous books for young readers. Ninth Ward takes on another disaster, Hurricane Katrina, and tells of two kids struggling to survive in the aftermath of the horrible flooding of their home. It is a great story of friendship, love, and adventure. Sugar is the story of another brave girl, born into slavery on a sugar plantation but now free. Freedom seems to involve the same old hard work in the sugar cane fields, though, until unlikely friendships give her the conviction that she can make a different life for herself. Jewell Parker Rhodes’ books may deal with serious subjects, but fortunately her heroines are so strong and lovely that you finish the books feeling braver yourself.
Have you read any of Jewell Parker Rhodes’ books yet?