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.

Sally 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.