 Hello, I'm Pukie and this is Lyra and Lyra is my daughter and she's 14? No, eight. Eight, Lyra's eight. Now today I got an exciting looking book in the post, I get these kind of things a lot and Lyra often reads them for me and I thought that rather than just her giving me her opinion that she should tell all of you. So Lyra's going to tell us about The Mermaid Who Couldn't. I'll give you a brief summary from the back of the book first and then Lyra will tell us what she thought. I am a useless mermaid, Mariana thought. I can't do anything. Mariana is not like the other mermaids, abandoned by a careless mother on the ocean floor. She has never laughed or played. She can't sing and can barely even swim. Then she meets a turtle called Muriel who welcomes her into her family and shows her all the things she can do. Wishing for children age four to nine and beyond, this picture book shows how children who lack confidence can learn to find a sense of self-worth. Does that sound about right? So tell us about, tell us what happened in the story, Lyra. So there was a mermaid who couldn't swim and she was just lying on the ocean floor. Yeah, so she's lying on the ocean floor. Sad. And then she got pulled up in a net and then she got really sad. So a fisherman caught her? Yeah. Why did that make her sad? Because she was in a net. So the fisherman took one look at her and then he pushed and then he let her go right back into the sea. Then she got scared because she just went, she just went flying down in there. But then she was happier because Muriel caught her on his back. So Muriel's the turtle. Let's just show everyone a picture of Muriel so you can see Muriel rescuing her here. And then what does Muriel teach to our mermaid? That Muriel and his family teaches her that she can swim if she tries hard. And she learns how to swim and then she's a very happy mermaid. Does she learn how to do other things as well? Yeah. And is it happily ever after or does she sometimes need some more help? She still knows that Muriel is there if she needs any help but it ends happily. That's good, isn't it? Shall we show, you had a couple of pages that were your favorite. Do you want to, if I just show them, in fact I can put them in a cutout, do you want to read these pages and then I can show them on the video after I've put magic in there. Mariana met Muriel's family who taught her how to swim. When Muriel told Mariana that she would always be nearby, Mariana smiled, a small sad smile. Together they swam from dark to light and back again. Mariana began to feel somewhat loved and a little bit happy. After some time she and Matt and Muriel paddled back to the Mermaid's Cove. I'll be right here dear whispered Muriel. So that's a bit like in psychology, so when teachers and other people who work with kids learn about how to make children feel happy and safe then we learn, you don't need to know all the technical stuff, but we learn about children having what's called a safe base so you form a secure attachment with an adult. So that would be like you have with Mummy and Daddy, so you know that if we, when we went to Priory Park last week and you wanted to ride your bike or go off and buy an ice cream on your own, you knew you could do that and we'd be there if you needed to come back you had safe base to go back to. And it sounds like that's what Muriel and his family did for Mariana, isn't it? So she knew she could be safe now. What was the other page that you really liked? This one, Mariana and the Mermaids spent many, spent many a day since they're singing, then singing sea songs, racing with dolphins and diving for pearls. So it ends pretty happily. Oh and what happens here, this feels important. But if she feels low as she sometimes still does, Muriel is always close enough to remind her to look up at the sky a clear blue wave and sing her own sweet mighty song as every mermaid should. That's really nice and I think that's quite important actually, isn't it? Because sometimes we have bits in our life that are a bit difficult and then things change and makes it better but that doesn't mean that every day for evermore is going to be beautiful and wonderful and perfect, does it? Sometimes we still need a little bit of help, don't we? So if you had to give this book a mark out of 10, what would you give it? 10. Yeah? Can you imagine using it in school, like maybe in the learning zone or something like that if you were feeling sad? Yeah. Is it suitable for everyone or just suitable for some kids? Suitable for everyone. And what was the thing you most liked about this book? That it was a happy ending and basically Muriel, Turtle taught her how to have a happy life. That's nice, isn't it? And do you think that it's just a story or do you think there's something that you can learn from it? So what can you learn from it? Or what could other kids learn from it? That if you're having, if you've had a sad life so far that things can all change, there's some help. And in the blurb then it suggests that this book is particularly suitable for working with children who are adopted or in foster care and certainly you can imagine that this would be a really nice and powerful story to use working with a child who perhaps was with a new family and was finding it difficult to sort of establish trust and have maybe had quite a difficult past. This kind of shows that yeah things don't have to stay that way, do they? Things can change and that we can become part of a new family and they might not look like us and they might be different to us but they can still kind of take us on board, teach us to swim and teach us to sing, can't they? Yeah. Well thank you Lyra, would you be happy to review books for me again another time? Should we ask, so everyone who's watching would you like to hear Lyra's views again in the future? I'm like waiting for a reply but actually they'll put them in the comments after I've uploaded the video. I'm sure they'll let us know. Well thanks Lyra, that was great and yeah we'll see you again soon. Subscribe to my YouTube channel. You can do that by clicking here and yeah see you soon, bye. We have two silly hands now, bye. Love you.