2009 review (see 2012 review following):Children's lit, but total delight to read. Very well written, detail exquisite--never gets "purple" but paints a clear picture of a fabled island. I still have a little problem with the "kidnapping" part, even though for a good cause and bettered the children's lives when they were returned to their families, but it keeps bothering me a bit. The four aunts aren't individually memorable to me, except I do know Aunt Myrtle is the one who plays her cello to the selkie (seal) and other seals. All of them are certainly intrepid! Fantasy animals--boobries and skoorworms and pangolins, etc. are fun, but what kept the book impossible to put down was the sheer delight of the good writing. Herbert, the selkie: "The clothes felt prickly on his skin and his soul felt prickly, too."Minette and Fabio are the stars, and the horrid, spoiled Lambert who shrieks for his mobile phone day and night, are memorable and fine characters for kids to read about. Thoroughly good read!2012 review:Read this a few years ago for a book group, and now chose it for a themed book group meeting (YA/Juvenile). Often I don't remember reading a book, but this one was memorable--the three aunts, Herman the seal, the mermaids, the selkies, especially Herbert, who shape-changes, as selkies can, into a heroic man, the awful parents of the "kidnapped" children, the humming kraken who is saving the oceans, an ocean spirit for a healing world, the boobrie, the stoorworm--I learned about real and mythical sea creatures with fascination. The punchy plot kept me turning pages, the descriptions put me there on the Island, even though there is a map in the book, I feel I could hike it easily, finding all the landmarks. I did have a hard time swallowing the camel of the kidnapped-children theme: I can see the need for it, the benefits of it, but the connotative horror of it bothers me a lot. How else could the three children, miserable and abused, be brought to the island? How else could the magical, mythical sea creatures be cared for and healed? Once I accepted the premise and kept reading, the delights on every page kept me in a happy trance: de-oiling the mermaids, wrapping the stoorworm around the proper tree, the tragedy of the Selkie of Rosnay, Herbert's mother, whose sealskin was stolen by a man, making her human until one day, years and seven children later, she finds her sealskin, put it on and is a selkie again, forever pulled by both the land and the sea. Making the third child be the awful, spoiled, whiny, nasty Lambert spices things up. The attack-in-the-name-of-rescue, the scare, and the resolution work quite well, and the whole book is a complete delight. It's going on the re-read list!
So far this is the 3rd story I’ve read by Eva Ibbotson, but unfortunately it’s my least favorite. It starts charmingly enough with the Aunts explaining that kidnapping is bad, but in this case it needs to be done. They need someone who will continue on with their legacy of caring for the magical and regular creatures that come seeking help to their far off island. Since neither of the three has children kidnapping is the only way. I know some reviewers had a problem with the kidnapping part, but I thought it was handled rather well and it did not bother me. What did bother me were some of the unexpected adult themes that were thrown in.Looking at the book and from the description I was expecting a charming, fairy tale like story with maybe an environmental theme. The 3 quirky aunts, a mermaid and giant bird are featured on the cover, there are some funny illustrations inside and it’s what I know Ibbotson produces from reading some of her previous books. But to my surprise she threw in a mermaid with an abusive, cheating husband, another mermaid who was manhandled and possibly sexually assaulted by a Lord, villains who are strapping some serious guns and are implied to do drug runs and carry whores on their yacht and a bratty kid who smiles while “thinking about: all the people he hated lying dead in their own blood” (p. 61). Not at all what I expected. I don’t know what age group this is geared towards, but these themes didn’t seem appropriate for children’s literature especially one that won a literary award. I don’t know. Maybe it’s just me being an “adult” or a “prude” even though I normally don’t let things like this bother me it did with this book. I felt like it could’ve been a better book if Ibbotson hadn’t thrown those things in and had concentrated more on the environmental theme of the book. Maybe children reading it will glaze over those details and get distracted by the funny illustrations, but for me I just found it jarring. I did enjoy parts of the story though. The aunts for the most part were hilarious and quirky. I liked the illustrations. This one in particular had me laughing:I also enjoyed the magical creatures…even the mermaids. I loved that the kraken makes an appearance and it’s not the typical mythological creature we are used to seeing. Overall, it is a creative story and I think any child or adult, for that matter, would love to visit the magical island. I’m only marking it two stars because the adult themes bothered and distracted me from the story.
What do You think about Island Of The Aunts (2001)?
I had a few problems with this books but not, it seems, the same problems other readers did. Other reviews talk about how the aunts kidnap children, and how the book tries to justify it, because someone needs to take care of the animals, and besides, the children weren't happy at home anyway. While I don't condone kidnapping children, even if they are unhappy, I guess for a fun kids book I was able to look past it. Willful suspension of disbelief, I guess.What bothered me, though, were all the times it talked about the sea creatures suffering things at the hand of humans. The mermaids had suffered through an oil spill (though one of the mermaids did technically cause it), and the aunts kept talking about keeping the location of the island secret so that people couldn't come and ruin everything (which someone did actually come and try to do)."But human beings are different. They always have been: interfering and bossy and mad for power.""Oiled seabirds...stunned seals...poisoned squids...and other things..."I'm all for taking care of the environment, and certainly oil spills are awful, and don't catch more fish than you need or dump your rubbish in the water. But nature and creatures, especially the more "magical" creatures, being exploited and harmed by big, bad humans seemed kind of cliché to me. It was pervasive throughout the book, and even by halfway through it was hard for me to look past it.
—Meredith
This is another one of those books I think I would have enjoyed immensely had I first read it when I was around 9-12 ... unfortunately, reading it as an adult, it fell a little flat. I could appreciate it from a distance, so to speak, but I never fully engaged with it. I also couldn't read about Minette's parents without feeling sick to my stomach (another problem I wouldn't have had as a child with less experience of the world). So, one I will cheerfully hand to my kids in a few years, but not one I will likely ever desire to read again myself.
—E.L.
Etta, Coral, and Myrtle are the caretakers of a magical island: that is, its inhabitants are in some cases supposedly mythical creatures, odd animals, and assorted supernatural creatures. But they aren't getting any younger, and they soon realize they need help caring for their island. They develop a plot to kidnap children to do it, because adults can't be trusted not to exploit the island or reveal it to the outside world. So three children are plucked from their own lives--where they are interpreted as "unappreciated" by their parents--and handed tasks, assigned duties like caring for sick or indisposed magical creatures and helping around the house. Understandably, not all of them are willing; Minette and Fabio are confused and a little scared, though awed by the island and delighted by some of their tasks, but then there's Lambert. He's a spoiled brat, and furthermore, his kidnapping may endanger the island when his father comes looking for him.This book has the same slightly twisted but whimsical feeling that some Roald Dahl books have; after all, it involves kidnapping kids and making them perform dangerous tasks away from everything and everyone they ever knew, but hey, they love it, and who hasn't felt unappreciated at home? (Good thing their guardians are caricatures of bad childcare, or we'd feel bad about them getting snatched.) Of course, everyone is kind of a silly exaggeration, and while some of the adventures are fun, it's clear where the story is going before we get anywhere near the middle. The chapters are somewhat episodic, and it'd make a good choice for read-alouds.
—Julie Decker
