We do know that Jinny, the eldest child this year, is having a hard time letting go of childhood.Īs an aside, Jinny is an admirably unlikable character. We don't know how the children get there, or why, or how the island takes care of them. It invites inevitable comparisons to Hokey Pokey, by Jerry Spinelli, of course, and for its first half Orphan Island seems to occupy that same allegorical space. Once a year a boat comes to bring a new toddler (a Care) and takes away the oldest child (the Elder), who is approaching adolescence. The premise is simple: nine children (each one year apart in age) live on an idyllic island. I feel like I should be getting more confident in my critical assessments as I get older, but instead I increasingly find myself going, "Huh! That sure was a book!" or, "Okay, I guess that's the kind of thing we're publishing these days?" It seems to happen more and more often to me. Sometimes you finish a book and you're not sure whether you've just read the best book of the year or witnessed a train wreck. Jinny knows her responsibility now-to teach Ess everything she needs to know about the island, to keep things as they've always been."Nine on an island, orphans all / any more the sky might fall." The boat arrives, taking away Jinny's best friend, Deen, replacing him with a new little girl named Ess, and leaving Jinny as the new Elder. And only one thing ever changes: on that day, each year, when a boat appears from the mist upon the ocean carrying one young child to join them-and taking the eldest one away, never to be seen again. The sun rises in a sky filled with dancing shapes the wind, water, and trees shelter and protect those who live there when the nine children go to sleep in their cabins, it is with full stomachs and joy in their hearts. "A wondrous book, wise and wild and deeply true." -Kelly Barnhill, Newbery Medal-winning author of The Girl Who Drank the Moonįor readers who loved Sara Pennypacker's Pax and Lois Lowry's The Giver comes a deep, compelling, heartbreaking, and completely one-of-a-kind novel about nine children who live on a mysterious island.
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