Grade Levels: 7-12
Category: Realistic Fiction, Adventure
Read-Alouds: pp1-11 (introduction); 66-69 (description of camp after someone has trashed it); 128-136 (Peg and her father change roles)

Summary: Fifteen year old Peg Toland and her father, a diabetic yet very fit man, go to a very small island, Sweet Friday Island, in the Sea of Cortez off the coast of Mexico for Easter break. They are told not to go to the island by the locals. They tell the locals they are going to a different island and go to Sweet Friday anyway. While Peg and her dad are exploring the island the first day they are there, someone trashes their camp and destroys their boat, leaving them stranded. The second day someone steals dad’s insulin and dad sprains his ankle while hiking. Peg is forced find whoever is harassing them, get her father’s insulin back, and get them off the island before her father dies.

Themes: Relationships: Peg and her father, the two of them and the local people, and the local, Robert Clemente, and his parents. Good versus bad: Peg kills, or thinks she kills the man on the island to save her father.

Discussion Questions:
• At the end of chapters 1 and 3 Peg has a “cold feeling”. What do you think cold means? Why do you think that?
• Tell me about something you’ve done with your parents or would like to do with your parents.
• “Are any of us capable of killing another human being to save a loved one”? Explain please. (Peg’s question at the end of the book)

Reader Response: I liked this book. It had some Science information in it and it is one I’d use while studying biomes in my classes. It was a story of the relationship between parents and their children when children switch roles with their parents and become their parent’s caretakers, not the usual parent/child role in most books. I liked the adventure/mystery aspects with several unexpected twists: the locals telling Peg and her father not to go to the island, someone wanting to harm them once they got to the island, Dad getting hurt and going into a diabetic coma, Peg’s thinking she’d kill the man, and how they’d get off the island. Peg’s question at the end of the book really made me think. I don’t have an answer to that question and I hope I am never in a situation where I have to kill or even harm someone else to save someone I love.