August Isle

Ali Standish's August Isle is a summer mystery for 9 year olds about a shy girl sent to stay in the one place her mum never talks about.

What happens

Miranda's mum is a photographer who's hardly ever home. When she takes a month-long job in Argentina (and Dad has a big trial in Chicago), Miranda is put on a plane to Florida on her own. She's going to stay with Aunt Clare, her mum's best friend since childhood, who isn't really her aunt at all.

Here's the thing. For years Clare has sent postcards of the island. Miranda's mum throws every single one in the bin. And Miranda quietly fishes every one back out, wipes off the banana, and hides them in a tin under her bed.

So she arrives with a plan. Her mum spent her summers here as a kid. Maybe the Isle holds the clue to why things have gone so wrong between them.

Miranda is SO easy to root for. She's scared of the dark, of chatting to grown-ups, of roller coasters and most of all of water. Which is a bit of a problem when she finds out she's been booked in for sailing lessons! You feel her panic on the beach, and how much she hates letting everyone down.

Then there's Sammy, Clare's daughter, who is chatty, bouncy and determined to find a big scoop for the school paper. She's exactly the friend Miranda needs (even if she did once use up all her toothpaste).

The mystery creeps in gently. A shabby mint-green house sits empty on a street of bright holiday homes, because the old man who lived there vanished. There's a dark lighthouse on a little island that gives Miranda the shivers. And Aunt Clare keeps shushing Sammy whenever she starts a story.

It's a sunny, warm read with a real ache underneath. Miranda misses her mum even when her mum is in the room, and she worries she isn't loved the way she used to be. Her parents have hushed arguments they think she can't hear. A child who's ever felt a bit lonely will probably recognise a lot of this.

Has your reader ever wondered what their parents were like as kids? This one's for them.

What to read next

If they'd like another mystery from the same author about someone vanishing from a small town, try Ali Standish's Yonder. It's 1940 in the Appalachian mountains, and Danny is trying to understand Jack, the boy the whole town called a hero after he pulled two little girls out of a flooded river.