SuitabookIngo
Helen Dunmore
- Reading
- Read alongside the child if the disappearance or peril feels significant, pausing to distinguish what the characters know from what they hope. Afterwards, discuss identity, loyalty and consequences rather than only solving the mystery.
- Themes
- Family separation and changing loyalties: Sapphire and Conor search for their missing father while their relationship with each other and their mother changes; their mother falls in love again. The family is presented as emotionally important but unsettled, with competing attachments rather than a single simple response to loss.
- Identity between land and sea: The siblings discover a connection with Ingo and can move between human and Mer worlds, while questioning who they are and where they belong. The story explores identity through fantasy ancestry and movement between worlds, presenting belonging as something the characters actively question.
- Protecting the ocean and justifying actions: A character believes that any action is acceptable when protecting the ocean from pollution and human interference. The book creates a moral problem rather than supplying a simple answer, making the justification of harmful or extreme actions discussable.
- Worth knowing
- Some situations may merit preparation: a parent’s disappearance and loss, frightening or dangerous episodes, an almost-drowning, attacks by grey seals, school conflict, and one obscured swear word.