• Written by Sheryl McFarlane
  • Illustrations by Sheena Lott
  • ISBN: 0-920501-76-1
  • hc $7.95 CDN / US

Reviews

“One of the best picture books to come out recently in an impressive display of Canadian talent is Sheryl Mcfarlane’s Jessie’s Island…The book is a celebration of nature and the implicit entertainment available through the natural world…”
— Canadian Children’s Literature

 

Jessie’s Island

Excerpt from Jessie’s Island

“Dear Jessie,
“You must be awfully bored living on an island in the middle of nowhere.” Thomas writes to his cousin Jessie.

Jessie replies,

“Dear Thomas,
“If you come to my island, I will show you…the bald eagles that summer in our giant fir tree, and the curious harbour seals that pop their slippery, whiskered faces up when we swim to the raft that Dad built… or maybe we’ll see a lone minke whale breech-feeding.”

Awards and Honours

  • Canadian Children’s Book Centre ‘Recommended Book’

Author’s Inspiration

From the author…

When I began writing Jessie’s Island, I wasn’t quite sure where the story would take me. I knew that I wanted to write a story about living on a island, but I didn’t know much more than that. I began with the word island in the middle of the page. From there, I created a web of all the things I enjoy about living on an island, like the misty morning fogs, watching the ferries pass, building sandcastles with my kids, exploring tidepools, playing with the seals that hang around the raft that some friends of ours built, seeing bald eagles and whales, fishing, kayaking, etc. The page was soon crammed with things to write about, but I still didn’t have a plot or characters. Then my younger brother phoned to tease me about living on an island in the middle of nowhere. The rest just fell into place.

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