Keeper (Appelt book) - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Keeper is a 2010 novel written by Kathi Appelt

Kathi Appelt

-Biography:Kathi Appelt was born in Fayetteville, North Carolina and grew up in Houston, Texas. She graduated from Texas A&M University. She and her husband, a researcher in adult literacy at Texas A&M, have two grown sons. She lives in College Station, Texas....

. This story tells about a young girl who searches for her mermaid

Mermaid

A mermaid is a mythological aquatic creature with a female human head, arms, and torso and the tail of a fish. A male version of a mermaid is known as a "merman" and in general both males and females are known as "merfolk"...

mother, Meggie Marie.

Summary

After unintentionally ruining a blue moon

Blue moon

A blue moon can refer to the third full moon in a season with four full moons. Most years have twelve full moons that occur approximately monthly. In addition to those twelve full lunar cycles, each solar calendar year contains roughly eleven days more than the lunar year of 12 lunations...

day by messing up her guardian's crab gumbo

Gumbo

Gumbo is a stew or soup that originated in southern Louisiana during the 18th century. It consists primarily of a strongly-flavored stock, meat or shellfish, a thickener, and the vegetable holy trinity of celery, bell peppers, and onions...

and breaking her favorite wooden bowl

Bowl

Bowl or The Bowl may refer to:* Bowl , a common vessel used to serve food* Bowl , in cannabis culture, a smoking device, its bowl-shaped part, or its capacity** Bowl, a part of a smoking pipe...

, causing a friend's ukelele to break as well as wrecking the plants of her elderly neighbor, Keeper decides to make everything right. Taking with her seven wooden figurines of different mermaids, her dog BD, and a charm she had since she was a girl, Keeper sets out to find her mother, Meggie Marie, who has not been seen in seven years.

Characters

Keeper: The protagionist of the story. Keeper's mother is Meggie Marie, a mermaid who swam away seven years ago. Since then, she has been living with Signe. She is an official "waxwing" for Dogie, has black hair
Black hair
Black hair is the darkest and most common of all human hair colors globally. It is a dominant genetic trait, and it is found in people of all backgrounds and ethnicities. It has large amounts of eumelanin and is less dense than other hair colors. Black hair is known to be the shiniest of all hair...

, and is ten-years-old. Apparently, she was born in the water
Water birth
Water birth is a method of giving birth, which involves immersion in warm water. The immersion can mean giving birth to the infant in the water or using it as a tool during the labor process. Proponents believe that this method is safe and provides many benefits for both mother and infant,...

. Her nicknames are "Sweet Pea," "Good'un," and "mergirl," the latter was used by her mother.

Signe: Keeper's guardian, who had raised Keeper since her mother went missing. Signe originally hails from Iowa
Iowa
Iowa is a state located in the Midwestern United States, an area often referred to as the "American Heartland". It derives its name from the Ioway people, one of the many American Indian tribes that occupied the state at the time of European exploration. Iowa was a part of the French colony of New...

, has white hair, and is twenty-five-years-old (she was fifteen when Keeper was born and eighteen when Meggie Marie left). She owned a wooden bowl that was broken by Keeper at the beginning of the book. The book states that the bowl was owned by Signe's mother, who died in a car accident along with Signe's father. Signe escaped from Iowa with only the wooden bowl as her possession.

Dogie: A friend and neighbor of Keeper's, who owns a shop called "The Bus." He has loved Signe for some time, and on the day of the blue moon, he was going to sing to her to marry him by playing his ukelele. He owns Too and stutters often. Too is his dog that can predict storms and trouble. Too woke up Dogie at night when he found Keeper in the boat all alone. In the illustrations of the book, Dogie is shown to be African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...

. He was from New Jersey
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...

and had joined the army. When Dogie came home from the army, he was shaking so hard but the doctors fix him; now only his voice stutters. When he sings while playing the ukulele, he does not stutter. He has two known relatives: his mother and an uncle named Sylvester.

Mr. Henri Beauchamp: An elderly neighbor of Keeper's, who is an expert on merstories. He is the owner of a one-eyed cat named Sinbad. He had owned many flowers, one of them being a night-blooming cyrus, and they were all knocked over and destroyed when Sinbad was being chased by BD. He is from Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer
Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer
Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer is the capital of the Camargue in the south of France. It is a commune in the Bouches-du-Rhône department by the Mediterranean Sea. Population: 2,478...

. Long ago when he was 15, he met the merboy Jack before sailing across the ocean.

BD: A dog that is owned by Keeper and Signe. He is friends with a seagull named Captain. In the book, BD goes with Keeper to help find her mother Meggie Marie. His name is short for "Best Dog."

Too: A little dog owned by Dogie. His name was originally "Best Dog Too." He is also known as a Storm Prognosticator.

Jacques de Mer/Jack: A merman and a lover of Mr. Beauchamp's. He might be the son of Yemaya, as she demands a gift after someone makes a wish whenever she appears.

Sinbad: A one-eyed cat
Cat
The cat , also known as the domestic cat or housecat to distinguish it from other felids and felines, is a small, usually furry, domesticated, carnivorous mammal that is valued by humans for its companionship and for its ability to hunt vermin and household pests...

owned by Mr. Beauchamp. He usually taunts the dog and is very old. Mr. Beauchamp claims that Sinbad comes from a "long line of pirate cats."

Captain: A resident seagull. He had crashed through the window of Keeper's home one stormy night with a broken wing five years before the events in the book. It was Signe who nursed him back to health. He is friends with BD. His favorite food is watermelon
Watermelon
Watermelon is a vine-like flowering plant originally from southern Africa. Its fruit, which is also called watermelon, is a special kind referred to by botanists as a pepo, a berry which has a thick rind and fleshy center...

. Watermelon taught him to fly again, because Captain was on the second story with his broken wing while Signe left watermelon for him on the first story,

Meggie Marie: The mother of Keeper, Meggie Marie had vanished seven years prior to the events in the book. According to a later chapter in the book, Meggie Marie had been told to leave by Signe after the former had almost drowned Keeper on her third birthday (if it was intentional is not truly known). She was first thought of to be a mermaid, but then Keeper finds out she wasn't. The house that she, Keeper, and Signe lived in belonged to her grandmother.

Summary

Characters

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