Kyle's Island

What do you do when your family falls apart?

For as far back as Kyle can remember, summers have belonged to Gram's cottage on the lake—playing around, fishing all day, and hanging out with the whole family. But this year is different. His father has moved out, his grandmother has died, and his mother is selling the cottage because they can't afford the upkeep. When everything he cherishes is lost, what is Kyle left with?

Sally Derby takes readers to a small lake in 1970s Michigan, where thirteen-year-old Kyle comes to understand that loss isn't forever, and that people are more complicated than they seem."...Derby creates a realistic rendition of family life, with a smattering of adventure, in this tender coming-of-age story."
--Publishers Weekly

"Debut novelist Derby writes a quiet, solid, and benevolently old-fashioned story..."
--The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

"A poignant coming-of-age story..."
--Kirkus ReviewsSally Derby was born and grew up in Dayton, Ohio. She had a very ordinary life until she learned to read and write. After that, whenever she wasn't in school, she was either reading or writing herself into exciting and wonderful places. She lived with her parents, her younger sister Cecelia, and the fabulous characters from books and her imagination until she went to college in Oxford, Ohio.

When she finished college she married Karl Miller and moved a whole forty miles to Cincinnati, Ohio. Soon she became a mother. Son after son was born or came to live with her until she and her husband were the proud parents of eight sons and one daughter. She has written several books for children including No Mush Today (Lee & Low Books), Whoosh Went the Wind (Marshall Cavendish), and Hannah's Bookmobile Christmas (Henry Holt), a Smithsonian Notable Book.

Sally lives in Cincinnati, Ohio. Visit her website at www.sallyderby.com.I jingled the car keys, tossed them up and caught them, ran my finger over the bumpy silver chain. There’s something about having car keys in your hand. All you have to do is slip the key into the ignition, turn it, and you’re in charge. Speed, direction, final destination—you get to decide. But you have to be sixteen. Almost thirteen doesn’t cut it.
So I couldn’t start the car, but I could blow the horn. I did—loud and angry. Mom stuck her head out the front door. "Vicki back?" she asked.
"No, she isn’t. And neither is Josh. What’s with this family? We were supposed to leave an hour ago."
"A half hour. They’ll be here. Is the car all packed?"
She was trying to change the subject, so I ignored the question. "Why don’t we call Josh home, and as soon as he gets here, we all wait in the car? Then when Vicki gets dropped off, we can just start up and leave." Okay, so that was a dumb suggestion, but she could have answered me. Instead she gave me the Look—I think the Look is the first thing teachers learn in college—and
went back in. Grumbling to myself, I opened the car door and slid into the driver’s seat. I sat there with my eyes closed, imagining I was in one of those new passenger vans instead of our ’69 wagon. I shouldn’t have had to imagine.
Dad always said a car’s got only five good years, and then you should trade it in. So, ’69 to ’74—that’s five years, right? But Dad was gone. Long gone. No Dad, no new car. On Valentine’s Day—how’s that for timing?—he’d kissed Mom and the girls good-bye, hugged Josh and me, and said he hoped he’d be back soon. He had to "think things out." Well, he could think all he wanted. He could stay away forever, as far as I was concerned.