Last Chance Island

by Norma Charles
Ronsdale Press
978-1-55380-458-1
228 pp.
Ages 10+
March 2016

The cover art of Last Chance Island put me in mind of a maritime story that I was sure took place off the coast of Canada on the Atlantic side.  North Atlantic Ocean, perhaps, or the Celtic Sea, but Canada, definitely not.  Last Chance Island, the island of the title, is the journey’s end of  the two protagonists of Last Chance Island,  the book, which is told in the alternating voices of thirteen-year-old Kalu of Nigeria and fifteen-year-old Canadian Lily Spiekeford a.k.a. Spike.

While Kalu and his young cousin Aisha escape an attack on their African village by rebel soldiers, Spike is being sent home from boarding school upon learning  of her father’s death.  As much as both parties would love to stay put, unforeseen circumstances propel them away from their homes.  Kalu, with only a few pebbles and herbs and his bamboo flute as mementoes of home, takes Aisha to a small seaside village, hopeful of getting work on the boats.  Finding nothing, Kalu makes himself available to a less-than-honest fisherman he calls Mister Elliot, squirrelling Aisha away on board.  Meanwhile, the purple-haired, nose-ringed Spike is being sent away by her father’s live-in girlfriend to stay with Maureen Calhoun, a relative of Spike’s dead mother, who is a lighthouse keeper on Last Chance Island off the coast of Ireland, hopeful the girl will find a place “where you’ll belong.” (pg. 17)

Upon learning that the Irish coast guard is checking for illegal migrants and apprehensive about being caught with more than just his smuggled contraband, Mister Elliot drops the kids off at the island, promising to return when it’s safe.  On the other side of the small island, Spike is being delivered by the water taxi of old Seamus who recognizes her as Lela’s daughter and tells her of Lela’s family living on the island, which he calls the “Beginning Place.” (pg. 55)

You know that the two sides are going to meet and it is fortunate for them to do so, even though Kalu is desperate to survive while waiting for Mister Elliot’s return, and Spike is bidding her time until she can escape the island and return to Dublin to join a group of street musicians she’s met.  It’s the meeting of Spike with Kalu and Aisha that brings them all to realize that Last Chance Island has become their new home.

Norma Charles, whose book Run, Marco, Run (Ronsdale Press, 2011) also focuses on a young person escaping to a new home, contrasts the very different lives of Kalu and Spike as beginning places but demonstrates that circumstances can bring unlikely allies together in purpose and acceptance.  The stories of Spike and Kalu may be on different trajectories but these paths are destined to collide at Last Chance Island, which thankfully is more opportunity than just destination terra firma. Norma Charles ensures that Last Chance Island becomes more than just a beacon for marine travellers; it is safe haven for a few lost souls too.

Look Out for the Fitzgerald-Trouts

by Esta Spalding

Illustrated by Sydney Smith

Tundra Books (Penguin Random House)

978-1-770498761

224 pp.

Ages 8-12

May 2016

Look Out for the Fitzgerald-Trouts because they’re here now and I’m sure they’re going to be around for a while (I’m already anticipating a follow-up book), even if they don’t have anyone really looking out for them.   The four Fitzgerald-Trout children-Kim, 11; Kimo, 11; Pippa, 8; and Toby, 5–are an odd assortment of children conceived through different combinations of fathers and mothers which include the wealthy and greedy Maya (mother to Kim and Pippa), the vain singer Tina (Kimo and Toby’s mother), the missing-at-sea Johnny Trout (father of Kimo) and mammalian research scientist Dr. Fitzgerald (father of Kim, Pippa and Toby).

They had different mothers and different fathers.  But they knew that didn’t matter.  They were a family because if you aren’t a family, you don’t live together in the same little car.  They knew they were brothers and sisters, even if when they made a new friend at school they had to take out a stick and draw in the dirt to explain just how they were related. (pg. 31)

And they all live in a small green car, which has gotten too small for them all to sleep in comfortably at night.  Kim, who wishes she lived in a house like the Perfects in her favourite book (a two-books-in-one The Perfects and The Awfuls),  keeps their little family on track with her to-do lists (which often includes "Find a House"), ensuring they go to school, do their laundry at Mr. Knuckles’ laundromat, and purchase food essentials and ice for their cooler from the loose coins Maya would give them or the money Tina dropped off for them.

When Maya is arrested for defrauding her investment clients, Kim almost finds them a home in Maya’s empty mansion, until it is seized to help repay investors.  Also thwarted is Kim's plan for them to hide away in the staged bedrooms of the massive furniture store MARRA.  It’s not until Kim decides that the Perfects whose lives are just too ideal are not the best of role models and that the Awfuls, who have endured and survived a variety of challenges, might be able to help guide them, that the Fitzgerald-Trouts find a home, far off the beaten path.

Look Out for the Fitzgerald-Trouts may read like a handbook of how NOT to parent your children but it’s a celebration of family, unconventional as it may be, and the drive to find a home and meet challenges with creativity and perseverance.  Esta Spalding has produced a set of widely-different characters who don’t always get along but at heart are everything to each other.  They are strong and weak, and childish and mature, and selfless and inconsiderate, and they are children who have adventures and suffer all manner of adversity and stick together. Middle-grade readers and proficient early readers will enjoy the journey on which Esta Spalding’s story takes them, all the more beguiling for its tropical island setting, its diverse and over-the-top characters and the ruts and potholes along the way.  And, though the illlustrations are rarely a subtantial component of any novel, Sydney Smith’s black-and-white line drawings help give substance to the Fitzgerald-Trouts and their story.  Look out for Look Out for the Fitzgerald-Trouts on reading lists everywhere very soon.

Kim from Look Out for the Fitzgerald-Trouts 

by Esta Spalding, illus. by Sydney Smith