Island of the Aunts

For use in schools and libraries only. When the kindly old aunts decide they need help caring for creatures who live on their hidden island, they decide to kidnap a few children, since adults can't be trusted.

Eva Ibbotson is the author of many books published to wide acclaim in Great Britain and the United States. Which Witch? was a runner-up for the Carnegie Medal and a New York Times best-seller, and The Secret of Platform 13 was short-listed for the Smarties Prize and named a Best Book of the Year by School Library Journal. Ms. Ibbotson has a daughter and three sons, now grown, who showed her that children like to read about ghosts, wizards, and witches "because they are just like people but madder and more interesting." She lives in the north of England. Kevin Hawkes is an illustrator and author-illustrator of many popular books for children, including Weslandia, by Paul Fleischman, and I Was a Rat, by Philip Pullman. The aunts' island seemed familiar to him. He and his family used to live on an island off the coast of Maine, and they often spotted seals swimming in the harbor and whales surfacing nearby. Kevin Hawkes and his wife, Karen, have four children. They now live in Gorham, Maine.