Kait Mae

If you’ve been following my blog for even a month, or if you’ve been looking through the past posts, you’ll see a lot of childhood nostalgia and hypothetical adaptations. And I’m continuing that by combining both again with this post. The Emily Windsnap series was a childhood favorite of mine that I recently rediscovered my love for. And, as with most books I love, I’ve been imaging just how I would put it on screens. So, let’s get into it.

What Is “Emily Windsnap”?

The Tail of Emily Windsnap was the book that started it all. A middle grade series following half-human, half-mermaid twelve-year-old Emily Windsnap as she discovers she’s a mermaid and explores the ocean with new friends.

The series started with Emily’s discovery and supposedly ended in 2020 with Emily Windsnap and the Tides of Time. And then Kessler surprised fans with a May 2025 release titled Emily Windsnap and the Crystal Caves. The author, Liz Kessler, also expanded the series to a spin-off series of children’s books following Emily and her friends.

A movie adaptation was announced in 2015 of The Tail of Emily Windsnap but nothing has come of it. Since there hasn’t been any news, I genuinely think the rights have reverted back to the author, but I’m no expert on that legal stuff.

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How Would I Adapt It?

I’ve said in the past that fantasy book series should always be television shows to explore the worldbuilding and magic system enough to do the series justice. That said, there have always been exceptions to this, and Emily Windsnap is one of those exceptions.

I’d make this a children’s movie series because the worldbuilding is pretty straight-forward and the books are pretty short. I genuinely think that unless we were adding to the plot of the books, movies would be the best choice.

As for animated or live-action, I could go either way. I’m not deadset on either.

If I were to go with animated, I am torn between three styles. The first is matching the illustration style from the books. The second is the style from H2O: Mermaid Adventures. And lastly, the third is the 3D-style of Disney’s Ariel show. That said, I’m leaning more towards the second because that style is nostalgic to me personally.

If I were to go with live-action, I would want to do the underwater scenes with CGI like we saw in The Little Mermaid or Aquaman. I would go this way because it would allow the actors to talk underwater like in the books, unlike other mermaid live-action media we’ve seen so far.

And Who Would I Cast?

For this casting, I’m going with cast that could work in both live-action and animated just to cover my bases.

First up, our titular character, Emily Windsnap. For her, I wanted to find a child actor that not everybody recognizes right now that has shown she can handle voiceover and live-action. And that actress is Elizabeth Phoenix Caro, who coincidentally also acts in the animated Ariel show.

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Up next, Emily’s mom, Mary Penelope Windsnap. I decided to go with Aimee Garcia because she has a youthful look while still having that maternal feel that Mary Penelope has.

While we’re on the topic of Emily’s parents, it’s time for Jake Windsnap. This might seem out of left field but I wanted an actor who you wouldn’t expect to pair Aimee with – and that actor is Sam Rockwell.

Moving on to Emily’s friends, we have mermaid Shona Silkfin. I wanted her to be slightly older than the Emily actress, so I’m going with Valentina Gordon.

With Aaron, Emily’s merman friend, I found someone who looks like the character and is around the same age as Emily’s actress. And that child actor is The Garcias’ Oliver Alexander.

Lastly for child actors that I’ll be casting now, we have Mandy Rushton, Emily’s bully turned friend. For her, I wanted someone around the same age as Emily, but also resembled the character art. So, I’m going with Scarlett Abinante from Good Girls.

Moving on to the last three adults, let’s start with Charles Beeston. First up, he has heterochromia, but that wasn’t a defining factor in casting. For him, I’m going to choose Virgin River’s Ben Hollingsworth.

Up next is Neptune and his twin brother, Njord. I didn’t want to cast one actor and make him do double duty by playing both, so I went with two well-known actors who could bounce off of each other well without necessarily looking like twins. Those two actors are Tim Matheson and Andy Garcia.

That’s all for this week’s post. Did you ever read Emily Windsnap? Who would you have cast? And would you do animated or live-action?