A Faraway Island

A Faraway Island
Author: Annika Thor
Publisher: Yearling
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2011-09-13
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 0375844953

Two Jewish sister leave Austria during WWII/Holocaust and find refuge in Sweden. It's the summer of 1939. Two Jewish sisters from Vienna—12-year-old Stephie Steiner and seven-year-old Nellie—are sent to Sweden to escape the Nazis. They expect to stay there six months, until their parents can flee to Amsterdam; then all four will go to America. But as the world war intensifies, the girls remain, each with her own host family, on a rugged island off the western coast of Sweden. Nellie quickly settles in to her new surroundings. Not so for Stephie, who finds it hard to adapt; she feels stranded at the end of the world, with a foster mother who's as unforgiving as the island itself. It's no wonder Stephie doesn't let on that the most popular girl at school becomes her bitter enemy, or that she endures the wounding slights of certain villagers. Her main worry, though, is her parents—and whether she will ever see them again.

The Faraway Island

The Faraway Island
Author: Dianne Hofmeyr
Publisher: Frances Lincoln Children's Books
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2008-09-01
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 9781845076443

When a sailor can't bear life on ship any more, he jumps overboard and swims to a big barren rock. There he cares for a half-drowned cockerel and plants rice, hiding away when a boat arrives. The sailors are amazed to see rice growing and keep coming back, leaving plants and game-birds, until the island bursts with tropical fruit and wildlife. But soon the Queen of Portugal hears about it and demands to meet the person responsible.

The Lily Pond

The Lily Pond
Author: Annika Thor
Publisher: Yearling
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2012-11-13
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 0385740409

A Mildred L. Batchelder Honor Book and an ALA-ALSC Notable Children’s Book, The Lily Pond continues the story of two Jewish sisters who left Austria during WWII/Holocaust and found refuge in Sweden. A year after Stephie Steiner and her younger sister, Nellie, left Nazi-occupied Vienna, Stephie has finally adapted to life on the rugged Swedish island where her she now lives. But more change awaits Stephie: her foster parents have allowed her to enroll in school on the mainland, in Goteberg. Stephie is eager to go. Not only will she be pursuing her studies, she'll be living in a cultured city again--under the same roof as Sven, the son of the lodgers who rented her foster parents' cottage for the summer. Five years her senior, Sven dazzles Stephie with his charm, his talk of equality, and his anti-Hitler sentiments. Stephie can't help herself--she's falling in love. As she navigates a sea of new emotions, she also grapples with what it means to be beholden to others, with her constant worry about what her parents are enduring back in Vienna, and with the menacing spread of Nazi idealogy, even in Sweden. In these troubled times, her true friends, Stephie discovers, are the ones she least expected.

Deep Sea

Deep Sea
Author: Annika Thor
Publisher:
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2015
Genre: Friendship
ISBN: 0385743858

Nearly four years after leaving Vienna to escape the Nazis, Stephie Steiner, now sixteen, and her sister Nellie, eleven, are still living in Sweden, worrying about their parents and striving to succeed in school, and at odds with each other despite their mutual love.

Dog Island

Dog Island
Author: Philippe Claudel
Publisher: Little, Brown
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2021-08-10
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 031670525X

When three bodies wash up on the beach of a remote island, the locals must decide whether they should uncover the truth or let the mystery die with the victims. Nestled in an overlooked part of the Mediterranean, Dog Island is home to a quiet and untouched community that has long lived off its fishing, its vines, and its olive trees, far away from the turmoil its neighbors. But when the bodies of three unidentified men wash up on the beach, the witnesses are faced with an impossible decision: report the discovery and open up the island to grisly inquiries, or conceal the terrible truth? Resolving to preserve their way of life, the mayor and a small group of conspirators resolve on a cover-up. But after they dispose of the evidence, their act of deception continues to haunt them, bringing waves of suspicion and misfortune to the island. A detective arrives from the mainland, making their secret even harder to keep and threatening to destroy the very community they tried so hard to protect. With the blend of suspense, keep observation, and wit that has made Philippe Claudel’s books international bestsellers, Dog Island challenges our deepest assumptions about ourselves and offers a fierce and tragic fable for our times.

Lost Children of the Far Islands

Lost Children of the Far Islands
Author: Emily Raabe
Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2014-04-08
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 0307974979

Twins Gus and Leo and their little sister, Ila, live a quiet life in Maine—until their mother falls ill, and it becomes clear her strength is fading because she is protecting them from a terrible evil. Soon the children are swept off to a secret island far in the sea, where they discover a hidden grandmother and powers they never knew they had. Like their mother, they are Folk, creatures who can turn between human and animal forms. Now they must harness their newfound magic for a deeper purpose. The ancient, monstrous King of the Black Lakes will stop at nothing to rise to power, and they are all that stands in his way. Their mother’s life hangs in the balance, and the children must battle this beast to the death—despite a dire prophecy that whoever kills him will die. Can Gus, Leo, and Ila overcome this villain? Or has he grown too strong to be defeated? Lost Children of the Far Islands is a story filled with magic, excitement, and the dangers and delights of the sea.

Islandborn

Islandborn
Author: Junot Díaz
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 48
Release: 2018-03-13
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 0735230951

From New York Times bestseller and Pulitzer Prize winner Junot Díaz comes a debut picture book about the magic of memory and the infinite power of the imagination. A 2019 Pura Belpré Honor Book for Illustration Every kid in Lola's school was from somewhere else. Hers was a school of faraway places. So when Lola's teacher asks the students to draw a picture of where their families immigrated from, all the kids are excited. Except Lola. She can't remember The Island—she left when she was just a baby. But with the help of her family and friends, and their memories—joyous, fantastical, heartbreaking, and frightening—Lola's imagination takes her on an extraordinary journey back to The Island. As she draws closer to the heart of her family's story, Lola comes to understand the truth of her abuela's words: “Just because you don't remember a place doesn't mean it's not in you.” Gloriously illustrated and lyrically written, Islandborn is a celebration of creativity, diversity, and our imagination's boundless ability to connect us—to our families, to our past and to ourselves.

The Secret Island

The Secret Island
Author: Enid Blyton
Publisher: Hodder Children's Books
Total Pages: 144
Release: 2016-01-14
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 1444921118

In Enid Blyton's classic Secret Stories mystery always leads to adventure. In Enid Blyton's very first full-length adventure novel, meet siblings Peggy, Mike and Nora. They live with their cruel uncle and aunt and long to escape, so when their friend Jack takes them to a secret, deserted island, they run away to live there. But not all is as it seems on the island and the children soon find their adventures are only just beginning ... First published in 1938, this edition contains the original text and is unillustrated.

The Faraway Nearby

The Faraway Nearby
Author: Rebecca Solnit
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 215
Release: 2013-06-13
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1101622776

A New York Times Notable Book Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award A personal, lyrical narrative about storytelling and empathy, from the author of Orwell's Roses Apricots. Her mother's disintegrating memory. An invitation to Iceland. Illness. These are Rebecca Solnit's raw materials, but The Faraway Nearby goes beyond her own life, as she spirals out into the stories she heard and read—from fairy tales to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein—that helped her navigate her difficult passge. Solnit takes us into the lives of others—an arctic cannibal, the young Che Guevara among the leprosy afflicted, a blues musician, an Icelandic artist and her labyrinth—to understand warmth and coldness, kindness and imagination, decay and transformation, making art and making self. This captivating, exquisitely written exploration of the forces that connect us and the way we tell our stories is a tour de force of association, a marvelous Russian doll of a book that is a fitting companion to Solnit's much-loved A Field Guide to Getting Lost.