The Sea Prince and the Fire Child (1981)

I love faeries, and anime, and this is the perfect combination of both. Alright, there are definitely some flaws in the movie. The colours are kind of faded, the bad guy is cheesy, and as is typical of 80's cartoons the girl just whines instead of doing something, among other things. My mind was telling me this as I was watching... but a stronger voice drowned that one out and was wishing I'd seen this movie when I was five years old. I would have loved it then. I still appreciate it now, but there's something about a child's perception that makes magic come alive and this story is full of magic.

It's about the son of the sea king and the daughter of the fire queen. As legend has it, the king and queen are siblings and were very close and always together. The wind saw this, became jealous of their happiness and told lies to each of them making them distrust the other. They quarreled and the fire queen went to live in the sky and the sea god the sea, and the wind was banished to the depths of the sea and his eye was removed. One day the prince of the sea goes to a forbidden place and sees the fire child watching over the eternal flame. He comes back the next day and they fall in love, and from there they try to find a way to make their impossible love work.

One of the things I love about anime is that it's not disnified. Obviously. What I mean by that is that a romanticized ideal is achieved, but not without cost. There isn't a false message that you can have your cake and eat it too. You should strive to achieve your desires, but you have to know that there may be a price to pay. This isn't ominous by any means, don't take it the wrong way, the movie isn't sinister and won't worry a child. The moral isn't that bad will always come from getting something you want, but more that sometimes you have to choose between two things you might like and if you choose one you might mourn the loss of the other, even though the choice you made was the best one and is what will make you the happiest. This isn't always the message in main stream films. Most of the time the idea expressed is that you go through a tough phase, but then by making the right choices all goes well in your life, happily ever after, without regret or pain or thoughts of what if. The story end with the idea that the couple will always be happy in their paradise, but in real life situations life isn't so black and white, and it's refreshing to see films reflect this every now and again, especially films for children.

The fire people are all faeries, and all except for the fire queen have a sprite-like appearance. The prince is human looking, but very lanky, and all of his subjects are fish (so both boys and girls will watch). It was a great film full of fantasy, adventure, whimsy, and romance. Great film.

Changeling Sea by Patricia Mckillip

 This was a great story. I love this author, she just has a certain style that brings whatever she says to another level. This said, the story isn't perfect. The major relationships between the main character and those around her aren't very strong, not strong enough anyways. At the end, not to spoil it, but she asks someone to come back for her, but the relationship between them wasn't strong enough for her to ask that of him... or at least we the readers weren't privy to it. They don't have to be ridiculously close or anything, the perceived distance between the characters is fine, but the draw between characters must make sense to the reader. If the author spent more time fleshing out relationships I think the story would've been better, because the relationships are very compelling, we just know too little of them. Peri says she enjoyed certain people's company because they needed her. Unless she is so weak and needy that someone recognizing her existence would make her go crazy, which I don't think she was, there is a part of the story the readers don't know about, or have to fabricate for themselves. So in a way it felt like she was grasping at straws, and the introductions of some characters, namely the workers at the inn, were kind of awkward.
 
Criticism aside, it was a wonderful story. The plot was well thought out and kept me interested. I thought the author did a great job of characterizing the sea. Kir was a great emphasis for this because he was half of the sea himself, so we had the sea both as itself and humanized in Kir. Periwinkle was ok, not the strongest heroine but compelling in her own way. I liked her name though, Periwinkle, you get few characters with such whimsical names. 

It was a great story though. It was short, I read it in a couple of hours, and it left me feeling kind of whimsical .

The Secret of Roan Inish (1994)

This is my absolute favorite movie and has been ever since I was a little girl. My mother actually introduced me to this movie and since then I have become addicted to all things mythological (I probably would have gotten into it anyways, but this sped up the process). 

It's a story about a girl who goes to live with her grandparents for a while because her father is too busy with work to care for her. While with her grandparents, she visits an island her family used to live on. This is also the island where her younger brother was taken away by the sea. She snoops around the island and catches glimpses of a small boy she suspects to be her brother. As it turns out, selkies have taken him away. So the girl, with the help of her cousin, begin to make the abandoned houses on the island habitable again so that they can move back, thereby getting the girl's brother back from the sea. 

This film is subtle, yet superbly effective in giving you that evanescent, magical feeling. So many movies try to capture that evasive 'something else' but end up being fake and cheesy but this one makes the cut. It's suitable for all ages and is a definite must experience. The soundtrack isnt bad either.

Stella Star Of The Sea by M Gay

This was a cute story about a brother and a sister at the beach. This is the brother's first time at the beach and he doesn't quite know what to make of the whole thing so he asks his sister a lot of questions about why things are the way they are, which she creatively answers, because of course all older siblings are all knowing and all powerful in the eyes of their younger siblings. One of the questions he asks, for example, is what is a starfish (or something to that effect), to which the sister replies, starfish are falling stars that fell in love with the sea. By the end of the book after they finish talking the sister asks if the brother's coming in the water, and he pauses before yelling out yes and running forward. It's cute.
 
The art is very fun and energetic as well.