The Animal Family by Randall Jarrell. 1965.

What a strange book. Jarrell’s is the story of a hunter and mermaid who fall in love and make a family from a bear cub, a lynx, and an orphaned boy. The story is uncannily realistic for all the lack of realism (a mermaid!). Bears act like bears, lynxes like lynxes, yet they live together in harmony. This strange combination of realism and surrealism makes for an unpredictable, fascinating, slightly unnerving little story.