A Faraway Island, Annika Thor
A Faraway Island, Annika Thor
List: $15.00 | Sale: $10.50
Club: $7.50

A Faraway Island

Author: Annika Thor, Linda Schenck

Narrator: Amy Rubinate

Unabridged: 6 hr 1 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 12/07/2010


Synopsis

Two Jewish sisters 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 8-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. She’s happy with her foster family and soon favors the Swedish language over her native German. 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 cold and unforgiving as the island itself. Her main worry, though, is her parents—and whether she will ever see them again.

About The Author

Annika Thor’s novel, A Faraway Island, is the first book in a quartet featuring the Steiner sisters. The books were bestsellers in Sweden and were adapted into a popular television series. She lives in Stockholm.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Lisa

Only when I had the book in hand did I realize this was the first book in a series of four books, and it looks as though the fourth is unfortunately not yet translated into English. I do wish that this story was told in one long book; sometimes I don’t like having to read multiple books to read what......more

A Story of Struggle “Faraway Island” is a very well written book about two Austrian girls who are sent to Sweden at the beginning of World War II. And the sad part of it is that they’re sent without their parents but our host it by very nice Swedish people. Again, this kind of book reminds us of the p......more

Goodreads review by Isidora

En ungdomsbok som värmer hjärta. Fortsätter med andra delen rakt av.......more

Goodreads review by Evelina

Andra gången jag läser dessa böcker och de är ännu bättre nu! Älskar den historiska miljön och karaktärerna. Läs hela recensionen här: [URL not allowed]......more


Awards

  • ALA Notable Children's Book
  • Mildred L. Batchelder Award Winner
  • Missouri Mark Twain Award
  • NCSS-CBC Notable Children's Trade Books in the Field of Social Studies
  • Sydney Taylor Book Award, Association of Jewish Libraries