Nim’s Island

Wendy Orr's Nim's Island is a sunny, splashy adventure for 8 year olds about a girl left in charge of her own island for three days.

What happens

Nim lives in a palm-thatched hut with her scientist dad, Jack. Her best friends are Selkie the sea lion, Fred the marine iguana and Chica, a green turtle who comes back every year to lay her eggs.

When Jack sails off to collect plankton, Nim stays behind. She's got coconuts to crack, a garden to water and a waterfall to slide down. What could go wrong?

A storm, as it turns out. Jack's boat is battered, his phone stops working and his rudder breaks. The only way he can get a message to Nim is by tucking a note into the leg band of a big frigate bird called Galileo.

Meanwhile an email turns up from Alex Rover, the author of Nim's favourite adventure book. Nim is sure Alex must be a real-life hero. The two of them start writing to each other every day (and Alex isn't quite who Nim thinks, which you'll work out long before she does).

It's such a happy book to read. Nim is brave and bossy and completely at home in the wild. She tickles a turtle's chin, climbs a volcano with an iguana round her neck and hurls twenty coconuts into a cove to test how long they float.

The animals are the best bit. Fred sulks, Selkie cheats at coconut soccer and Chica sits on the ball underwater so nobody can take it off her!

There are some tense moments. The volcano erupts while Nim's at the top and she cuts her knee badly running down. Her dad is hurt and stuck out at sea while Nim waits for him. Nim's mum isn't in it either. We learn in the first chapter that she was lost diving with a whale when Nim was a baby.

That might need a little chat for a young reader who worries about parents. But it's all told gently, and Nim's so busy and capable that the worry never takes over.

If your reader dreams about living on a desert island with animals for friends, this is absolutely the one.

What to read next

If they want another child who's lost track of their parents at sea, try Oliver and the Seawigs. Oliver's explorer mum and dad motor off to some mysterious new islands and vanish, so he sets off after them on an island that moves, with a very grumpy albatross for company.