Description
A Newbery Honor Book
Today I moved to a twelve-acre rock covered with cement, topped with bird turd and surrounded by water. I am not the one kid who lives here. There may be my sister, Natalie, aside from she doesn’t count. And there are twenty-three other kids who survive the island because their dads work as guards or cook’s or doctors or electricians for the prison, like my dad does. Plus, there are a ton of murderers, rapists, hit men, con men, stickup men, embezzlers, connivers, burglars, kidnappers and perhaps even an innocent man or two, though I doubt it. The convicts now we have are the kind other prisons are not looking for. I never knew prisons might be picky, but I guess they are able to. You get to Alcatraz by being the worst of the worst. Unless you’re me. I came here because my mother said I had to.
“Choldenko’s pacing is exquisite. . . . [A] great read.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review