Returning from a swimming class with his Grandma, Julian is mesmerised by the sight of three women in flamboyant mermaid costumes. Inspired by their style and self-possession, he falls into
a happy reverie in which he too is changed into a mermaid. Later, when Grandma is taking a bath, he paints his lips, improvises a costume with a curtain as tail, and fashions a headdress out of a plant. Unfazed by his experimentation, his Grandma presents him with a string of beads to complete his outfit and takes him for a walk to where a local seaside themed parade is taking place, and where glamorous mermaids and other sea-creatures abound. This sympathetic portrait of a boy wishing to imagine a different identity has a minimal text and relies largely on its sequence of humorous - and lovely - illustrations celebrating the fun of self-transformation and of dressing up to experience a colourful new persona.