This sequel to FARAWAY ISLAND follows 13-year-old Stephie Steiner, a Jewish girl from Vienna who's sent to Sweden in 1940. Narrator Amy Rubinate flawlessly delivers Austrian and Swedish accents and portrays characters of various ages, cultures, and religious backgrounds. Stephie moves from a remote Swedish island to Göteborg for school, where she boards with a wealthy family similar to her own. Her best friend, Mae, who is from a large, poor, socialist-leaning family, opens new horizons for Stephie. She's forced to grow up fast when she learns that her parents may not be able to leave Austria. Rubinate particularly captures Stephie's range of feelings as she copes with her worries about her parents. Two additional books are planned for this moving series. S.G.B. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine
The Lily Pond
Narrated by Amy Rubinate
Annika ThorUnabridged — 5 hours, 4 minutes
The Lily Pond
Narrated by Amy Rubinate
Annika ThorUnabridged — 5 hours, 4 minutes
Audiobook (Digital)
Free with a B&N Audiobooks Subscription | Cancel Anytime
Already Subscribed?
Sign in to Your BN.com Account
Related collections and offers
FREE
with a B&N Audiobooks Subscription
Overview
A year after Stephie Steiner and her younger sister, Nellie, left Nazi-occupied Vienna, Stephie has finally adapted to life on the rugged Swedish island where she now lives. But more change awaits Stephie: her foster parents have allowed her to enroll in school on the mainland, in Goteberg. Stephie is eager to go. Not only will she be pursuing her studies, she'll be living in a cultured city again-under the same roof as Sven, the son of the lodgers who rented her foster parents' cottage for the summer.
Five years her senior, Sven dazzles Stephie with his charm, his talk of equality, and his anti-Hitler sentiments. Stephie can't help herself-she's falling in love. As she navigates a sea of new emotions, she also grapples with what it means to be beholden to others, with her constant worry about what her parents are enduring back in Vienna, and with the menacing spread of Nazi ideology, even in Sweden. In these troubled times, her true friends, Stephie discovers, are the ones she least expected.
Editorial Reviews
Booklist, December 1, 2011:
"A compelling look at World War II–era Sweden, this distinguished Holocaust story will resonate."
Horn Book, January/February 2012:
"Stephie’s story of adjustment to a new school and of a first crush is both specific and universal"
Gr 4–8—Stephie Steiner and her sister, Nellie, were evacuated from Nazi-occupied Vienna in 1938. In the sequel (2011) to A Faraway Island (2009, both Delacorte), the second book in the quartet by Annika Thor, the two Jewish girls have been living with different foster parents on a remote Swedish island for a year. They are adjusting to life without their parents who were forced to stay behind. Stephie has an opportunity to attend school on the mainland and pursue her studies on a scholarship. When she learns that she is lodging with the same family who rented her foster parents' island cottage for the summer, Stephie is excited but nervous at the prospect of facing the couples' son again. Although he's older than Stephie, she's falling in love with him, especially with all his talk about equality and his anti-Nazi sentiments. On the other hand, she is struggling with her classmates' prejudice. Amy Rubinate does an excellent job of evoking all the emotions of a teenager who wants to be accepted by her classmates, fall in love, and do the right thing for her family. It is easy to picture Nellie's enthusiasm at Stephie's weekend visits and Aunt Marta's displeasure at learning of Stephie's attendance at the cinema. She gives each character a unique voice, and seamlessly blends the narration and the dialogue, drawing listeners into the drama and the historical significance of the time. Listeners will eagerly await the next book.—Sheila Acosta, Ed Cody Public Library, San Antonio, TX
This sequel to FARAWAY ISLAND follows 13-year-old Stephie Steiner, a Jewish girl from Vienna who's sent to Sweden in 1940. Narrator Amy Rubinate flawlessly delivers Austrian and Swedish accents and portrays characters of various ages, cultures, and religious backgrounds. Stephie moves from a remote Swedish island to Göteborg for school, where she boards with a wealthy family similar to her own. Her best friend, Mae, who is from a large, poor, socialist-leaning family, opens new horizons for Stephie. She's forced to grow up fast when she learns that her parents may not be able to leave Austria. Rubinate particularly captures Stephie's range of feelings as she copes with her worries about her parents. Two additional books are planned for this moving series. S.G.B. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940172076312 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Penguin Random House |
| Publication date: | 10/11/2011 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
| Age Range: | 8 - 11 Years |
Read an Excerpt
The Lily Pond
By Annika Thor
Delacorte Books for Young Readers
Copyright © 2011 Annika ThorAll right reserved.
ISBN: 9780385908382
One
The funnel of the steamboat opens wide, releasing a mournful howl and a cloud of black smoke. The moorings have been dropped, and the gangway has been drawn up. In a wide arc the boat pulls away from the pier and steers out to sea.
Stephie stands in the stern, waving. All the people on the pier wave back: Nellie, Auntie Alma, the little ones, and Vera. Stephie said goodbye to Uncle Evert last night, before he headed off with the fishing boat he works on, the Diana. When he and the rest of the crew return with their catch in a few days, Stephie won’t be there.
The people on the pier are shrinking; soon Stephie can’t see them. The last thing she loses sight of is Vera’s copper-red hair, glistening in the sun.
“Let’s go inside and sit down,” Aunt Marta says. “Our clothes are getting dirty from the coal smoke.”
Brushing a few particles of dirt only she can see off the sleeve of her light summer coat, Aunt Marta precedes Stephie to the passenger area, her little straw hat pressed firmly down over the gray bun at her neck.
Aunt Marta’s wearing her very best clothes to take Stephie to Goteborg, where Stephie is going to board with Dr. Soderberg and his wife, so she can continue her schooling. The school on the island is only for the first six years. One weekend a month, and on vacations, she’ll stay with Aunt Marta and Uncle Evert. It’s all planned.
The air in the passenger area is muggy; Stephie fans herself with a newspaper someone left on the bench where they’re sitting. Aunt Marta, though, sits straight as a ramrod, with her buttons done up to the neck and the corners of her head scarf crossed neatly over her chest. She doesn’t seem to notice the heat.
The suitcase at Stephie’s side contains nearly all her earthly possessions: her clothes, her books, her diary, and her photographs of Mamma and Papa. The only thing she left in the room under the eaves at Aunt Marta and Uncle Evert’s is her old teddy bear. She’s a big girl now, thirteen.
She intends to go by the name of Stephanie at her new school. It sounds romantic and grown up, not childish like her nickname. Sven, the Soderbergs’ son, calls her Stephanie. She’s looking forward to seeing him again soon.
“My name is Stephanie,” she mutters softly to herself.
“What was that?” asks Aunt Marta.
“Nothing.”
“There’s no need to be nervous,” Aunt Marta tells her. “You’re just as good as everyone else, remember that. Better, even.”
Aunt Marta doesn’t easily dish out praise, or flattery, as she calls it. Coming from her, this is an enormous compliment.
“Aunt Marta,” Stephie begins.
“Yes?”
“Have you ever regretted taking me in?”
Aunt Marta looks bewildered. “Regretted? Of course not,” she says. “We did the right thing. There’s no regretting that.”
“But I mean have you never wished they had sent you a different child? A nicer one?”
At that, something even more unusual happens. Aunt Marta laughs.
“Oh, my dear girl, you have the strangest ideas! The thought has never so much as entered my mind. I admit that you do foolish things at times, but you’ve never done anything so bad that both God and I were not prepared to forgive you.”
Stephie can’t help wondering who is stricter, Aunt Marta or her God. Or do God and Aunt Marta always agree about everything?
The steamboat barrels along between the little islands and skerries. Off in the distance behind them is the horizon.
A year ago Stephie and her younger sister, Nellie, made this trip in the opposite direction, from Goteborg out to the faraway island; it was the last leg of their long journey from home. Their parents are still in Vienna. The Swedish government agreed to take in Jewish refugee children, but no adults.
When Stephie was sent to the island, she had to leave everything familiar behind and make her way to a foreign country to live with strangers who spoke a language of which she knew not a word. In a letter to her parents, she wrote, This place is nothing but sea and stones. I can’t live here. She never sent that letter.
This time she’s not leaving because anyone is making her; she’s leaving of her own free will. She wants to go on with her education, study hard, and go to the university, where she’ll become a doctor, like Papa. She’s wanted to follow in his footsteps for as long as she can remember. But from the beginning, of course, she expected to do it all at home, in Vienna.
So here she is, breaking away again, this time from Aunt Marta and Uncle Evert; from Vera, the one friend she finally made; and from Nellie, who’s going to stay with Auntie Alma and her family on the island. Will Stephie never again feel completely at home anywhere? Will she always be on her way to the next destination?
The boat will soon be in Goteborg. They’ve left the sea and are making their way through the mouth of the Gota River to the harbor.
“Couldn’t we go out on deck now?” Stephie asks. “I’d like to see the city from the water.”
“All right,” Aunt Marta concedes. “If it means so much to you.”
They stand by the guardrail on the right-hand side. On that bank of the river is the city center. The other bank is actually an island, a big one, called Hisingen, where all the shipyards and industries are.
“Look, the Seaman’s Wife.” Aunt Marta points to a statue of a woman on a very tall column. “She’s looking out to sea, waiting for her husband to return.”
Although Stephie can’t see the statue’s face, she imagines that the woman looks like Aunt Marta, with those worry lines she always has on her forehead when Uncle Evert is out at sea. There is a war on, the fishing waters are a minefield, and although Sweden is not one of the countries at war, Swedish fishing and merchant vessels have been blown up.
The boat docks at the pier, which is very long, wide near the shore and narrower farther out in the river. Men in blue overalls are loading barrels and boxes from nearby trucks. Stephie feels a bit dizzy; she hasn’t seen so many people in one place for a very long time. Cautiously, suitcase in hand, she makes her way down the gangplank. She and Aunt Marta press through the crowd toward land. Stephie sees a steady stream of traffic; the cars smell nasty to her unaccustomed nose. She takes a big stride from the pier to the cobblestones. It has been a whole year since she set foot on a city street.
From the Hardcover edition.
Continues...
Excerpted from The Lily Pond by Annika Thor Copyright © 2011 by Annika Thor. Excerpted by permission of Delacorte Books for Young Readers, a division of Random House, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Videos
