COREY'S ROCK

Traversing the territory of grief, young Isla and her parents seek renewal in change.

Isla clings to her parents while they toss petals into the sea, one for each year of the five that her brother, Corey, was alive, after they move to the small Scottish island where her mother grew up. Isla dreams of the selkie, imprinted in her psyche from the selkie story her dad has told her. It, the ocean, and Corey converge in her dreams, as she feels lost in her grief. Isla and her father walk along the beach each day to her new school, and they stop to sit on Corey’s rock each time they pass it. Isla resents having left Edinburgh to start a new life without Corey and her friends. But on her first day of school, she meets her first new friend, Magnus, who welcomes her warmly while other new classmates (all are white) quiz her on her origins: “But where are you really from?” The child of an interracial marriage, Isla is biracial, with a white mother and a black father, both Scots. Brahmachari delicately weaves selkie lore into Isla’s free-verse narration as she considers identity and grief, while Ray’s delicate watercolors seamlessly transition between folklore and real life.

A tale lyrically told, dressed in sublime illustrations that brilliantly depict the fragility and beauty of life, lost in the landscape where myth and sea converge.