Island War by Patricia Reilly Giff (review)

It's 1941, and eleven-year-old Izzy has convinced her mother to move to the Aleutian Islands after the death of Izzy's naturalist father; Matt is sullenly relocating there on the insistence of his irascible dad. The two, coincidentally unfriendly schoolmates back home in Connecticut, avoid each other in their new island home as they settle in, in Izzy's case, or grumpily endure, in Matt's. Then the Japanese attack and occupy the island, first fencing the inhabitants into an enclosure and limiting their movement, then hauling them away on their ships—all except for Izzy and Matt, who must work together to survive on their own on the island and evade detection by the soldiers stationed there. With Izzy's attachment to island dog Willie, this has echoes of Mary Treadgold's 1941 classic We Couldn't Leave Dinah about the Channel Islands occupation, and the focus here is similarly on Matt and Izzy' escapades (and on their reaching détente and even friendship) rather than the import of the war. There's a lot of implausibility and handwaving of logistics here—even the survival elements that give the story its appeal are often glossed over—and the book's focus on two fictional white kids distorts a real-life tragedy whose victims were almost entirely Aleut. The prose is nonetheless swift and readable, and readers may imagine themselves ducking the enemy along with Matt and Izzy. DS