Mermaid Dance, a well built interactive board book that moves and charms

Who is the king of interactive board books? It’s not like there is a fiefdom of illustrators and authors battling it out for supremacy a la Survivor.  There is no tattooed ringleader with their arms outstretched asking the world whose house this is. These are interactive board books, the kind that toddlers, crawlers and pre-K kids love to paw over, pull their levers, wonder how the object on the page moves, and try their best to make the book unusable for future generations. Mermaid Dance is by the husband and wife team of Matthew Van Fleet and Mara Val Fleet. Matthew is the #1 New York Times Best Selling Author, behind Tails and Dog, as well as the Oscar the Octopus, Chomp Goes the Alligator, Dance, and more.

When thinking about purchasing a board book there are some important things to consider. And when factoring in all of those things, Mermaid Dance is a tank of an interactive board book. When you look at it you’ll see five, colored tabs with arrows on them that are encouraging kids to pull them out. The pages with those arrows are ¼ inch thick. The tabs on those pages are 1/8 inch thick and firmly built into those pages.

The spine of a board book is usually the first thing that fails. The spine in Mermaid Dance, is similar to Chomp Goes the Alligator or Oscar the Octopus in that it’s incredibly strong and durable. In this case, the front cover is just over ½ inch thick, with the spine gently opening up once you turn that page. As you come to the final page, which even surprised our 10-year-old reader, the spine joins seamlessly with the pages once again.

“This is a baby book”, our son said. I reminded him that this is a board book and meant for kids who are two years old or older, and not for such a mature soul as his. But oh, if you have a two-year-old kid they will absolutely love Mermaid Dance. This is a book for boys or girls and is one of those books that will end up in your forever library. It’s a bold claim stating that a board book, one that’s actually enjoyed by children can stand up to normal, unsupervised use, and still be enjoyed by the next generation.

Of course, all of this is useless unless kids genuinely enjoy the book. Again, Mermaid Dance nails it to the floor with that qualification. It focuses on a group of merkids. They all live in the sea and have received an invitation to a dance, but they don’t know how to dance. Think of it as an underwater, alternative Footloose, where dancing is allowed, but the kids have never experienced it.

Thankfully for the merkids in Mermaid Dance there’s a group of fish who have a really simple way to teach them. The seahorse just wants them to swish their tails like they do. The merkids need to nod their heads like the narwhal. Seals spin naturally and ask that they spin like them. On each page where an underwater animal asks the kids to do something, there is one of those well-constructed tabs.

As they pull the tabs out, the seal spins, the polar bear twists, the penguin flaps its wings, and more. Once the merkids are feeling confident, having met all of the animals, they gather for the final page, which is a pop-up page. At its peak height, it’s 6’ off of the page and is so cool that it even surprised our surly 10-year-old. “Wow, that cool.”, he said, trying to play down the fact that he was impressed by a board book.

But, you will be also. This is a thick, fun-to-read, interactive board book that young audiences will stare at gape-eyed in wonderment. Those ages will want to re-read it several times a night and will probably fall asleep with it in their crib, and then their first big-kid bed. The construction of Mermaid Dance is equaled only by its quality and is one of those books that your kids will always remember.

Mermaid Dance is by Matthew Van Fleet with illustrations by Mara Van Fleet and available on Paula Wiseman Books, an imprint of Simon and Schuster.

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