Chapter 3: Marbella and Sawyer Island Education



 In the mermaid kingdom of Marbella, education is usually an interactive experience, like a continuous field trip.  Among other things, merchildren learn about other sea life, how to weave baskets from eelgrass, and of other aquatic cultures, such as undines (seen at left), melusines, naiads, ama divers, Moken, and bayou shanty-boat dwellers. Merchildren also learn of fairies, sylphs, sasquatches, and Gullah humans.
     Mermaid Grandmother Glynis unintentionally gives Triza (the youngest mermaid princess) the wrong impression when she repeats tales she had heard from fairies. Triza comes to believe that among humans every challenge has a happy ending.
     On Sawyer Island, Emily learns from such books as the McGuffey Readers and An Improved Grammar of the English Language (suggesting some deficiency in the previous version of the textbook.)  Although logic was commonly taught in Western kingdoms of the early nineteenth century, it was forbidden in Beauteous Kingdom.  Emily’s father had also provided his family with a book called Birds of North America.

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