Island of Whispers
by Frances Hardinge; illus. by Emily Gravett
Intermediate, Middle School    Amulet/Abrams    120 pp.
8/24    9781419774331    $19.99
e-book ed.  9798887073118    $17.99

Milo’s father has a vital role to play on the island of Merlank: he’s the Ferryman, responsible for transporting the Dead to a place where their spirits are free to depart, no longer hampered by Merlank’s clingy mist. Otherwise, the Dead would linger, blighting the land and killing others with their fatal gaze. Thus, when the grieving Lord of Merlank causes Milo’s father’s death, Milo must become the Ferryman and sail the Evening Mare, despite what his father always deemed the dangers of Milo’s sympathetic, imaginative spirit. Don’t listen to them; don’t look at them, was his father’s self-protective way with the Dead. But when the Lord’s daughter writes a poem on the deck, desperate for her words to go on living despite her early demise, Milo realizes that listening, recording, and sharing can also be part of the Ferryman’s job. Gravett’s spectacularly misty, atmospheric illustrations, all in shades of indigo, heighten what is most elusive and poignant about Hardinge’s story—the sorrow of endings, the significance of last messages, and the inexorability of mortality. Hardinge’s own poetic language (most clearly visible in the girl’s poem: “The gnats sing the sun to sleep / Over the lake the air cools / Twinned birds fly through two pink skies”) brings multiple shimmering layers to both plot and imagery in this melancholic, fantastical tale.

From the July/August 2024 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.