Easy Reader Series Series: Mermaid Days

I love a good easy reader series (mostly) and I love when really acclaimed authors get into writing for developing and early readers, so when I saw a new Kyle Lukoff easy reader series, I was ready to read! Unfortunately….I was let down.

At least at my library, these are not the typical easy reader quality—they are shorter and wider, more like really high quality Golden books, rather than the traditional easy readers. My library has them in both hardcover and paperback. They are not “leveled” like the traditional easy readers but the back indicates they “appeal to K-1st graders” and have a “grade 1” reading level.

There are three books in this series so far, all written by Kyle Lukoff with art by Kat Uno.

The main character is Vera, who lives in the underwater town of Tidal Grove. We follow her adventures, and the story plays out mainly in fully-illustrated pages with everything in a dialogue or thought bubble.

Mermaid Days: The Sunken Ship

The subtitle is a bit misleading in this one—we don’t get to the sunken ship til the end, and it’s over pretty quickly. We meet Vera, we meet her friends and the area of Tidal Grove where she lives, and then we meet a new neighbor, Beaker, an octopus, and learn all about how his legs don’t get along with each other. The story finally goes to the Sunken Ship where Beaker and then two other friends get stuck, and Vera frees them using a saw fish. It’s super introductory, and I wouldn’t find it so much if I hadn’t been expecting it to be more about the ship because of the title. The use of only dialogue bubbles isn’t my FAVORITE, but it’ll be good for transitioning readers to graphic novels.

Mermaid Days: The Sea Monster

Ok…I’m starting to lose my interest in this series. I just expect more from Kyle Lukoff, you know? This continues to be very surface level—not choosing a plot really, doing the usual easy reader thing–a new friend, a school field trip, etc. The titles are also just…setting readers up for failure. In this one, Vera and her class go to the tidal pools to see animals, learn to be quiet to get them to come home, and then talk of a Kraken while swimming home. We clearly see a Kraken on the page, and while I know it doesn’t have to be scary for this age, the “reveal” when the Kraken starts speaking is very anticlimactic. I know it’s for first graders….but they deserve stories too, not just back and forth dialogue on mundane ocean-adjacent things to make it seem like a mermaid story when really it’s just your basic low level kids story “set” underwater.

Mermaid Days: A New Friend

Another “could have been great” but was a dud chapter book easy reader. In the first chapter, our protagonists return their library books and see random holes, which reveals to them a tiny little mantis shrimp, who of course, in the second chapter, they have to help get home. In the third chapter, they randomly find a box of toys and play. Again, I reiterate: I expect so much more from Kyle Lukoff. How did he get roped into this?