Author: Eva Frantz
Swedish original: Sköldpaddsön
Publisher: Schildts & Söderströms, 2025
Genre: children’s novel, middle grade
Number of pages: 205 pp.
Reading material: Swedish original, Finnish translation, English sample, English synopsis
A thrilling adventure on a mysterious island where wonderful creatures are hiding in plain sight.
Tortoise Island is an idyllic island, the home to a healing spring and a popular inn, but something is wrong: the spring has run dry, and there are no children on the island. Not until 12-year-old orphan Edla arrives on the island alone to join her only living relative.
Edla is lively and hard-working, but she is also used to being an outcast: her hair fell off when her family died, and people have been avoiding the little bald girl ever since. Edla quickly starts making friends on the island and feeling at home, but she can’t escape the feeling that someone is hiding something, and soon she has a lot of unanswered questions: why are there no children on the island? What happened during the wreck that sunk the ship Calliope years ago? And above all, who lives in the supposedly deserted Captain’s house up the hill? Rumor has it that it’s a monster, but Edla has a mind to find out the truth for herself.
Tortoise Island is crime author Eva Frantz’s fourth children’s novel and takes readers on a journey to the late 19th century, in a scenic setting on a mysterious island where nothing is as it seems. Eva Frantz is an established Swedish-language author whose works have already been translated to more than 10 languages. She has won the Runeberg Junior Prize for the best children’s book of the year and the Clew Award for the best crime novel of the year.
About the author
Eva Frantz