Wet Magic by E. NesbitSeaStar Books, 2001 (originally T. Werner Laurie, 1913)

I love E. Nesbit and this book is especially lovely: four children go to the seaside for a summer holiday and learn, on the way there, that a mermaid has been sighted. This is very exciting news, especially for Francis, the eldest, who has never seen the sea before but is entranced by a print the family has of a nymph and the text of Milton’s “Sabrina fair.” The mermaid, it turns out, has been captured and put in a circus: the children set out to save her, and end up in the kingdom of the merpeople, where other adventures ensue. Classic Nesbit, clever and sweet and fun: the accent of the circus barker, shouting about the “Unique Lotus of the Heast,” the descriptions of the lobsters and porpoises and sea-horses, the idea of knowledge getting you into trouble and then getting you out of it.