Seacrow Island

There is no red-haired girl strong enough to lift a horse in Astrid Lindgren's Seacrow Island, but fans of Lindgren's Pippi Longstocking will still recognize her appealingly anarchic outlook in this story (just reissued, along with Lindgren's Mio, My Son, by NYRB Children's Classics) of a family of summer visitors to a remote island in the Stockholm archipelago. Just the right level for a reader who has mastered Pippi, but appealing to readers far older as well (especially ones who enjoyed Tove Jansson's similar Summer Book), Seacrow Island is full of distinctive and warmly drawn characters (children as well as adults who act like children) and stories that have the quiet ebb and flow of everyday life. (Ages 8 to 12)