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Audiobook6 hours
A Faraway Island
Written by Annika Thor
Narrated by Amy Rubinate
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
4/5
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Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this audiobook
Two Jewish sisters leave Austria during WWII/Holocaust and find refuge in Sweden.
It's the summer of 1939. Two Jewish sisters from Vienna-12-year-old Stephie Steiner and 8-year-old Nellie-are sent to Sweden to escape the Nazis. They expect to stay there six months, until their parents can flee to Amsterdam; then all four will go to America. But as the world war intensifies, the girls remain, each with her own host family, on a rugged island off the western coast of Sweden.
Nellie quickly settles in to her new surroundings. She's happy with her foster family and soon favors the Swedish language over her native German. Not so for Stephie, who finds it hard to adapt; she feels stranded at the end of the world, with a foster mother who's as cold and unforgiving as the island itself. Her main worry, though, is her parents-and whether she will ever see them again.
From the Hardcover edition.
It's the summer of 1939. Two Jewish sisters from Vienna-12-year-old Stephie Steiner and 8-year-old Nellie-are sent to Sweden to escape the Nazis. They expect to stay there six months, until their parents can flee to Amsterdam; then all four will go to America. But as the world war intensifies, the girls remain, each with her own host family, on a rugged island off the western coast of Sweden.
Nellie quickly settles in to her new surroundings. She's happy with her foster family and soon favors the Swedish language over her native German. Not so for Stephie, who finds it hard to adapt; she feels stranded at the end of the world, with a foster mother who's as cold and unforgiving as the island itself. Her main worry, though, is her parents-and whether she will ever see them again.
From the Hardcover edition.
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Reviews for A Faraway Island
Rating: 3.950707323943662 out of 5 stars
4/5
71 ratings12 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sisters Sophie (12) and Nellie (8) are among 500 Jewish children transported from Austria to Sweden in 1939. The sisters miss their parents very much, but they console themselves with the thought that their parents will be sending for them soon and the whole family will emigrate to America. The sisters end up on a remote island staying with different families. Nellie settles in fairly quickly with her host family, but Sophie has a hard time adjusting to the stern woman who has taken her in. She has trouble fitting in at school, where she is bullied by the other students.This book has won multiple awards in both the original Swedish edition and the English translation. It has an Anne of Green Gables meets the Holocaust feel, but it's more melancholy. There's no “bosom friend” like Diana Barry, and readers will be aware that Sophie's misfortunes are bound to grow as Nazi persecution of the Jews increases. This book should also appeal to fans of Lois Lowry's Number the Stars.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Two Jewish sisters are evacuated from Austria to Sweden by the Swedish Aid Society. The story mostly follows the older sister Stephie who lives with "Aunt Marta" and "Uncle Evert" on a small island. Evert is a fisherman by trade, and the couple doesn't have much money. Nellie lives in the same village with another couple, although the plan had been for the two girls to live together. Nellie ends up adapting to the new situation and making friends more easily than Stephie who is bullied by classmates. Stephie dreams of going to "grammar school" upon completion of the sixth grade (which she'd already completed in Austria) and of eventually becoming a doctor like her father. The girls also work to try to get their parents out of Austria into Sweden after their parents' attempts to get into America fail. A friend and I listened to the first thirty-seven chapters on the audio book on a trip. I had to complete the short remainder with the e-book version available to me. I really enjoyed the narrator of the English translation. I also enjoyed the author's comments at the conclusion of the book and hope to be able to read or listen to the remainder of the books in the series.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I read this because A) it won a Batchelder, and I love that award B) it is Swedish. I found it to be a bit tedious. OK, she's miserable and her sister isn't. I get it. So much time was spent building up just how horrible her life is, and how miserable it is, and then it was all fixed in a few chapters at the end. There were some interesting secondary characters who weren't very well developed at all. The Christian-conversion themes were jarring to my liberal American sensibilities, although they're historically accurate, I wish there had been more discussion about them.
I should say, that I probably would have liked this more as a child.
I was really surprised to read in the author's note that these are so widely read and translated and made into TV specials. Perhaps I should read the others in the series. But I probably won't. - Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Inspired by real events. During WW2, twelve-year-old Stephie and her 7-year-old sister Nellie are sent by their parents to live with Swedish families for their safety while the parents try to secure entry permits to America (the family is Jewish). Nellie adapts well to her living situation, making friends and learning the language easily. The focus of the story is on Stephie, who has it harder, living with the seemingly stern Aunt Marta and tortured by the kids at school. She also feels the pressure of living up to her parents' expectations and ensuring that Nellie doesn't forget her background. Readers' hearts will ache for Stephie who tries to make the best of a lonely situation and helplessly takes it on the chin from her tormentors. But there are moments of hope and kindness, and the book ends with the relieved sense that Stephie has finally found her place, if only temporarily, in this new country.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Two sisters are part of the 500 Jewish children evacuated from Austria to Sweden; they end up in separate but nearby families on a small island. The younger fits in quickly, the elder (on whom the story focuses) is bullied at school and feels unwelcome at home. These are fairly predictable plot-shapes but nicely told.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Awful cover but great Holocaust story.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Holocaust fiction from the point of view of Stephie, a young girl sent away to Sweden with her little sister Nellie, far from parents trapped in Nazi Germany. Stephie promised her parents that she would protect Nellie, but they are split up in two separate foster homes when they arrive in Sweden. The girls have difficulty adjusting to the new language, new school, new homes and lack of friends in this place, as they await news of their parents' escape. This is a story of courage on a daily basis -- Stephie and Nellie get up every day and do what they have to do to live, and try to find happiness where they can. Excellent writing and characters -- anyone who liked Number the Stars by Lois Lowry will enjoy this one. 6th grade and up.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Stephie and Nellie are sent to Sweden by their parents to keep them safe from the Nazis. They end up being fostered by different families on a remote island. Whilst Nellie settles in quickly, Stephie finds things harder; her foster mother seems cold, she is bullied at school and she wonders if she will ever see her parents again. This book is the first in a series of 4 but the others aren’t available in English yet.A realistic story that would suit readers 10 and up.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5a faraway island is the first of a series of four books by Swedish author, Annika Thor. The series relates the story of the Steiner Sisters--Stephie and Nellie--two Jewish girls who are sent from their home in Nazi-occupied Austria to live with foster families in Sweden. Although the book is fiction, it is based on historical facts. In the author's note at the end of the novel, Thor writes "after Kristallnacht in November 1938, when the Nazis burned down so many synagogues, pillaged and vandalized Jewish shops, and rounded up thousands of people for deportation to concentration camps, the small Jewish congregations in Sweden pleaded with the government and managed to arrange for five hundred children from Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia to be brought to Sweden" (244). Though the circumstances which put these children in foster homes differs greatly from most children in foster care today, the struggles and emotions were very similar.On her first night in her foster home, Stephie cries alone in her room: "When she finally stops sobbing, Stephie feels emptied out, as if she had nothing inside but a gaping hole (27)." Stephie and her younger sister, Nellie, are distraught at being separated. Stephie doesn't understand her foster mother's sternness or her foster mother's motivation for taking Stephie in. She feels she's treated differently than a biological child would be: "They'll do for me, Stephie finds herself thinking, Old, worn-out books will do for a foreign child. Old, worn-out books, not to mention an ugly, old lady's bathing suit that will do for a refugee child who has to live off the charity of others. If Aunt Marta had a child of her own, that child would never be getting hand-me-down books (79)." Because Stephie does not share her feelings with her foster mother, there are many misunderstandings which lead to more difficulties for Stephie. She also struggles with her sister, Nellie, who's experiences in another foster home differ so much from Stephie's own experiences. In the end, the book carries an important message for all readers regardless of their background: through sharing and listening, we can create compassion and understanding, which will help us get through even the most difficult times.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Personal Response:I appreciate the attention paid to the experience of a smaller group of children (500), sent to Sweden during WWII. While more attention has been paid to efforts made in Great Britain and the US to save children from the Holocaust, this is an interesting perspective on the efforts of a smaller country.Curricular Connections:I would use this title in a book group on perseverance, sisterhood, the Holocaust, refugees, or WWII.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5In 1939 Sweden, two Jewish sisters wait for their parents to flee the Nazis in Austria, but while eight-year-old Nellie settles in quickly, twelve-year-old Stephie feels stranded at the end of the world, with a foster mother who is as cold and unforgiving as the island on which they live.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Following the invasion of Austria by the Nazis, two young Jewish sisters from Vienna, twelve-year-old Stephie Steiner and her eight-year-old sister, Nellie, are sent away by their parents to safety in Sweden. Their parents hopes the family can reunite soon and travel to a safer country, but shortly after the sisters arrive in Sweden, World War II breaks out in Europe, trapping the two young girls in a strange and foreign country, away from their parents.The two girls are placed in separate homes on a small island in Sweden, and have very different experiences. Nellie loves her foster parents, who have young children of their own. Stephie however is placed with a seemingly cold and unloving childless couple. While the younger Nellie quickly adapts to life in a strange new country, Stephie struggles to learn the new language, and feels like an outcast in school. Will she ever adjust to her new country and new life? And what will become of the parents she left behind?Before reading A Faraway Island, I had never even heard of the story of the 500 Jewish refugee children Sweden accepted just before the start of World War II. The author, Annika Thor, grew up in a Jewish family in Sweden and had young refugee cousins who had fled the Nazis in Europe. She has published three other books about Stephie and Nellie in Sweden, that tell the rest of their story during and shortly after World War II, and I hope to see them published in English so I can find out the rest of of the story. This book would make a good choice for preteens looking to supplement their learning about World War II with historical fiction, as well as for any reader looking for a unique story set in this time period.