The Secret Sea Horse

By Debbie Dadey and Tatevik Avakyan

Echo Reef loves sea horses so much, she wants one for a pet…no matter what!

Of all the creatures in the ocean, sea horses are Echo Reef’s favorite. They’re sweet and gentle and they glide through the water so gracefully. When Echo discovers that Rocky Ridge, one of her Trident Academy classmates, has his own pet sea horse, she wants one right away. Not everyone agrees sea horses should be pets, however—perhaps they are happiest when swimming freely. But Echo thinks that if Rocky can make a sea horse happy, she can too! Can’t she?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Aladdin
• Release date: Sep 17, 2013
• ISBN: 9781442482623

Debbie Dadey

Debbie Dadey is an author of early readers and graphic novels including The Adventures of the Bailey School Kids Graphix Chapters Books. She lives in Sevierville, Tennessee, with her husband Eric and their dog Carmen.

Book preview

Contents

TRIDENT CITY MAP

CAST OF CHARACTERS

1 THE WORST THING

2 GLOOMY

3 THE SEA HORSE LEGEND

4 ZOLLIE THE SEA HORSE

5 ECHO WANTS A PET

6 PRISON

7 END OF THE OCEAN

8 RIGHT OR WRONG?

9 WILD CREATURES

10 SECOND CHANCE

CLASS DRAWINGS

THE MERMAID TALES SONG

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Dream of the Blue Turtle Excerpt

About Debbie Dadey

GLOSSARY

To my Moland House friends:

Ed Price, Ken and Lorraine Barlow,

Clare Reilly, Mary Lutz,

Bob and Joy Snyder,

Murrie and Chaya Gayman,

Cal and Sandy Uzelmeier,

Warren Williams, Nancy Crowder,

Nancy Elias, Ginny Wolfe,

Toots Brown, Cheryl Lewicki,

Joan and Dave Healy, Ed Greenawald,

Dave and JoAnne Mullen, Chet Davis,

and Dawn Dickson

The Worst Thing

ECHO REEF HELD HER BREATH. She crossed her fingers and her pink tail fins. She was hoping that Mrs. Karp wouldn’t say the worst thing ever. But she did.

Class, Mrs. Karp said, looking around the room of twenty third graders, we will have a spelling test on Wednesday.

Echo’s heart sank. But a merboy named Rocky Ridge cheered, Yippee! Everyone looked at Rocky in surprise. Usually he hated any kind of schoolwork.

Rocky smiled and then he laughed. Just kidding.

Mrs. Karp raised her green eyebrows at Rocky, but continued. Since we only have two days before your test, I’ll give you a short list of ten words.

Ten words! Echo thought it might as well have been a million. Echo was a good merstudent in most of the subjects at Trident Academy. She liked merology, storytelling, science, and astronomy. But spelling was difficult for her.

Mrs. Karp pointed to a list of words on a seaweed chart. These ocean creatures are extremely interesting. It will be quite useful to know how to spell their names. Echo looked at the list as Mrs. Karp called on various students to read the words aloud.

Pipefish, Shelly Siren said.

Sea dragon, Kiki Coral read.