Ingo (Ingo Series #1)

by Helen Dunmore

Overview

A whisper on the tide

Sapphire's father mysteriously vanishes into the waves off the Cornwall coast where her family has always lived. She misses him terribly, and she longs to hear his spellbinding tales about the Mer, who live in the underwater kingdom of Ingo. Perhaps that is why she imagines herself being pulled like a magnet toward the sea. But when her brother, Conor, starts disappearing for hours on end, Sapphy starts to believe she might not be the only one who hears the call of the ocean.

In a novel full of longing, mystery, and magic, Helen Dunmore takes us to a new world that has the power both to captivate and to destroy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780060818548
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	01/29/2008
Series:	Ingo Series , #1
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	5.12(w) x 7.62(h) x 0.67(d)
Lexile:	640L (what's this?)
Age Range:	13 - 14 Years

About the Author

HELEN DUNMORE is a novelist, short story writer and poet. She has written twenty-two children’s books, including Brother Brother, Sister Sister; The Lilac Tree; The Seal Cove; and the bestselling Ingo series. She has written nine adult books including A Spell of Winter, which won the 1996 Orange Prize for Fiction. Her poetry collections have won the Poetry Society’s Alice Hunt Bartlett Prize and the Signal Poetry Award. Helen Dunmore was born in Yorkshire, England, and now lives in Bristol with her husband and children.

Read an Excerpt

Ingo

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By Helen Dunmore

HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

Copyright © 2006 Helen Dunmore
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0060818522

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Chapter one

You'll find the mermaid of Zennor inside Zennor Church, if you know where to look. She's carved from old, hard, dark wood. The church is dark too, so you have to bend down to see her clearly. You can trace the shape of her tail with your finger.

Someone slashed across her with a knife a long time ago. A sharp, angry knife. I touched the slash mark very gently, so I wouldn't hurt the mermaid any more.

"Why did they do that to her, Dad? Why did they hurt her?"

"I don't know, Sapphy. People do cruel things sometimes, when they're angry."

And then Dad told me the mermaid's story. I was only little, but I remember every word.

"The Zennor mermaid fell in love with a human," said Dad, "but she was a Mer creature and so she couldn't come to live with him up in the dry air. It would have killed her. But she couldn't forget him, and she couldn't live without him. She couldn't even sleep for thinking about him. All she wanted was to be with him."

"Would she have died in the air?" I asked.

"Yes. Mer people can't live away from the water. Anyway, the man couldn't forget her either. The sight of the mermaid burned in his mind, day and night. And the mermaid felt just the same. When the tide was high, she would swim up into the cove, then up the stream, as close as she could to the church, to hear him singing in the choir."

"I thoughtit was mermaids that sang, Dad."

"In this story it was the man who sang. In the end the mermaid swam up the stream one last time, and he couldn't bear to see her go. He swam away with her, and he was never seen again. He became one of the Mer people."

"What was his name, Dad?"

"Mathew Trewhella," said Dad, looking down at me.

"But Dad, that's your name! How come he's got the same name as you?"

"It's just by chance, Sapphy. It all happened hundreds of years ago. You know how the same names keep on going in Cornwall."

"What was the mermaid called, Dad?"

"She was called Morveren. People said she was the Mer king's daughter, but I don't believe that's true."

"Why not?"

"Because the Mer don't have kings."

Dad sounded so sure about this that I didn't ask him how he knew. When you're little, you think your mum and dad know everything. I wasn't surprised that Dad knew so much about the Mer.

I stroked the wooden mermaid again, and wished I could see her in real life, swimming up the stream with her beautiful shining tail. And then another thought hit me.

"But Dad, what about all the people the man left behind? What about his family?"

"He never saw them again," said Dad.

"Not even his mum or his dad?"

"No. None of them. He belonged to the Mer."

I tried to imagine what it would be like never to see Dad again, or Mum. The thought was enough to make my heart beat fast with terror. I couldn't live without them, I knew I couldn't.

I looked up at Dad. His face looked faraway and a bit unhappy. I didn't like it. I wanted to bring him back to me, now.

"Can't catch me!" I shouted, and I ran off, clattering up the stone aisle of the church to the door. The door was heavy and the fastening was stiff, but I wrestled it open.

"You can't catch me!" I yelled back over my shoulder, and I ran out through the porch, down the stone steps, and into the sunshine of the lane. I heard the church door bang, and there was Dad, leaping down the steps after me. The faraway look had gone from his face.

"Look out, Sapphy, I'm coming to get you!"

That was a long time ago. Dad never talked about the Mer again, and nor did I. But the story lodged deep inside my mind like an underwater rock that can tear a ship open in bad weather. I wished I'd never seen the Zennor mermaid. She was beautiful, but she scared me.

It's Midsummer Eve now, and when it gets dark, they'll light the Midsummer Fire on Carrack Down. We go up there every Midsummer Eve. I love it when they throw the wreath of flowers into the flames, and the wreath flares up so that for a few seconds you watch flowers made out of fire. The bonfire blazes, and everyone drinks and dances and laughs and talks. Midsummer Night is so short that dawn arrives before the party's over.

Dad's up there now, helping build the fire. They pile furze and brushwood until the bonfire stands taller than me or Conor. Conor's my brother; he's two years older than me.

"Come on, Saph! I'm going on up to see how big the bonfire is now."

I run after Conor. This is how it usually is. Conor ahead, and me hurrying behind, trying to keep up with him.

"Wait for me, Con!"

We wait for the sun to set and for the crowd to gather, and then it's time to light the Midsummer Fire. The first star shines out. Geoff Treyarnon thrusts his flaming torch into the dry heart of the bonfire. The fire blazes up, and everyone links hands and begins to dance around it, faster and faster. The flames leap higher than the people, and we have to jump back.

Conor and I join the ring around the fire. Mum and Dad dance too, holding hands. It makes me so happy to see them like this, dancing and smiling at each other. If only it was always like this. No quarrels, no loud voices . . .

The flames jump higher and higher, and everyone yells and laughs. Conor drinks a bottle of ginger ale . . .

Continues...

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Excerpted from Ingo by Helen Dunmore Copyright © 2006 by Helen Dunmore. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Editorial Reviews

Dunmore's (The Siege, for adults) richly imagined fantasy, her first for young adults, posits tension between two parallel worlds: one undersea, the other along the rocky Cornwall coast. Sapphire, 11, and her older brother, Conor, have grown up in a close-knit family, loving the tidal cove below their cottage. Their father, Mathew, a fisherman and photographer, adores the sea; on the other hand, their mother has, in her words, "good reason to fear" it. When Dad disappears, and part of his boat is found, the family holds a memorial service and moves painfully through grief. Even a year after his disappearance, Sapphy and Conor refuse to believe their father is dead, while their mother begins to move on, befriending a visiting diver. Mer children Faro and Elvira begin to court the siblings, introducing them to such marvels as breathing underwater and swimming with dolphins. Ingo, the undersea world about which their father sang, beckons overpoweringly, and Sapphy, who is drawn back there repeatedly, begins to understand the Mer language. A wise beekeeper, whom some suspect is a witch, seems to know Mathew's fate. She subtly intercedes as Sapphy vacillates, "cleft" between her Mer and Air identities, and also suggests that Ingo is "breaking its bounds," intruding into the Air world. Dunmore makes both settings riveting, and captures Sapphy's lonely struggle through the heroine's first-person narrative. Dualities skepticism and belief, collective memory and individual perception, the pull of Mer life versus Sapphy's family love persist to the tale's end and beyond. Ages 10-up. (Sept.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Gr 5-9-A family living on the coast of Cornwall gets caught up in the undersea kingdom of the Mer people. After their father mysteriously disappears, Sapphy and her brother, Conor, visit Ingo and find themselves yearning to return to the ocean world. Conor resists, but Sapphy has a stronger affinity with the watery kingdom. While she struggles with its temptation, she also clashes with her mother, who seems too ready to forget the children's father. These elements come together in an exciting climax in which the siblings risk traveling to Ingo to save the life of the human diver their mother is dating. Sapphy's present-tense narration brings readers right into her world. Through her eyes, they see the beauty of Ingo, the comfort of her earthbound home, and the confusing muddle of thoughts and emotions that her experiences inspire. The undersea world seems equal parts menacing and alluring, which builds suspense and keeps everything pleasingly unpredictable. Relationships are especially well drawn. Sapphy is dedicated to Conor, despite some jealousy; she loves her mother, though she's keenly aware of how different they are; and she is not sure how to feel about Faro, the charming, sometimes angry young Mer man who serves as her undersea guide. Strong character development combines with an engaging plot and magical elements to make this a fine choice for fantasy readers, who will look forward to the next installments in this planned trilogy.-Steven Engelfried, Beaverton City Library, OR Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

School Library Journal

Merfolk and the stories about them pervade Cornwall, the seaside community where Sapphire and her older brother, Conor, live. One of the most memorable moments, in fact, between Sapphire and her father, happens when he tells her the story about Mathew Trewhella, who left his human girlfriend for the Mermaid of Zennor. So, it's not really a surprise that Sapphire's dad, also named Mathew Trewhella, disappears after going out on his boat late one evening. The kids believe that their dad isn't dead, but lives now with the Merfolk, and they want to prove it. Coincidentally, they begin to be called by the sea and start swimming with the Mer. The two experience a double life as "Air" people and partly transformed "Mer" creatures. This confuses them and they begin to question who they are and what their true ancestry is-and of course they want to find their dad. When their mother gets a diver boyfriend, Roger, the kids have to decide whether or not they want to save him from certain death, or to let him follow his human fate. What's fresh about this mermaid story is that it doesn't try to be what it's not; so many of the elements will be familiar to young readers, but they will get to examine Mer life from their own perspective. A gentle, pleasurable read. (Fiction. 10-14)

Kirkus Reviews