Read The Way To Impossible Island free in the Little Reads app.
Sophie Kirtley's The Way To Impossible Island is a wild, windswept adventure for 9 year olds about a boy with a poorly heart and a girl from thousands of years ago.
Dara Merriam is twelve, and his heart needs a Big Operation. It feels like he's been waiting for it forever. On holiday by the sea, he has it all planned. Once it's done, he'll take a boat out to Lathrin Island on his own and camp there overnight. Maybe he'll even spot the Golden Hare!
Then, on an empty beach, he hears a howl. A wolf howl. He runs, and his body gives up on him. The next day Mum and Dad break the news that the operation isn't going to happen. Not yet, anyway.
Thousands of years earlier, Mothgirl is twelve too. She hunts with her spear and her wolf, ByMySide, and she's worried sick about her big brother Hart, who hasn't come home. Then Vulture arrives at their camp. He's a painted clan leader with sharpened teeth, bringing gifts. And he wants Mothgirl for his son.
The chapters swap between the two of them, and both their stories are pulling towards the same wild island. Before long, Dara finds a girl in animal skins with a real wolf, who simply shouldn't exist.
Mothgirl's voice is brilliant ("You NOT take me, Vulture!"). She's fierce and proud and funny, even when everyone tells her girls don't hunt. And Dara's frustration is so real. He calls his oxygen mask Darth, and he's sick of being careful.
A heads-up for sensitive readers. Dara's collapse and his heart condition are described honestly. In Mothgirl's world, Vulture holds a knife to her father's chest, a spear to his own son's throat and smears blood on her cheek. And her father agrees to send her away with him.
A child who worries about illness might find Dara's scenes hard. But a reader living with a health condition of their own may love a hero who just wants to do the ordinary, daring stuff everyone else gets to do.
If Mothgirl and her wolf are the bit they love most, try Katherine Rundell's The Wolf Wilder. Feo lives with wolves in the Russian snow and has to stand up to a cold, cruel general.
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