71 Books Like The Secret Island (Secret Series)

I first read this extraordinary, heartwarming story of self-reliance and survival when my own children were growing up, and I’ve returned to reading Island of the Blue Dolphins often throughout my adult years, typically at times when I find myself struggling to regain my footing as I face personal problems and challenges.

Published in 1960, this book tells the story of a young girl named Karana who spends nearly two decades abandoned and alone on the desert island her tribe evacuates after a deadly conflict with Aleutian otter hunters. I’ve often recommended this slight but powerful tale to women friends suffering from feelings of desolation and helplessness, and Karana’s courage, resilience, and creativity have succeeded in lifting their spirits and inspiring hope.

I love this book because it teaches about real-life situations like children being orphaned, being homeless, family alienation, and even some survival tips (if that’s what you’re into). I would say that this book is cute, but now that I think about it, it’s really not. It’s cute in some aspects but mainly sad and scary.

I didn’t really understand what was going on in it back when I last read it (I was really young), but I do now.

This historical novel has been heralded as a fresh look at the era of the Little House books, and it does a wonderful job of looking at frontier life in Dakota Territory in 1880 from the perspective of Chinese-American Hanna. It’s also an examination of a daughter trying to navigate an often prickly relationship with her white father, made even more difficult after the death of Hanna’s Chinese-Korean mother. I love Hanna’s careful study of everyone around her—observances that are borne from a need to protect herself from racism, but which are also windows to empathy and understanding. Despite her father’s resistance to Hanna following her dream to become a dressmaker, Hanna prevails, using her knowledge of her father’s own nature to win him over.

Maddy is a city kid spending her first summer alone at her Grandmère’s house on the bayou in Louisiana. Her grandmother is a little bit strange, but she and Maddy get along perfectly and can even read each other’s minds. At Grandmère’s side, Maddy learns to cook, to care for her chickens, to make healing potions, study the weather and tides, but she also learns not to stare, not to mumble, not to be quick to judge. And when an environmental and emotional disaster occurs, Maddy is called on to lead and to heal all on her own. Her triumph is thanks to what she learned from Grandmère. This multigenerational story, gorgeously written by Coretta Scott King award-winner Rhodes, is heartwarming and exciting and Maddy’s survival skills are impressive.

For those of us who lived through 9/11, it’s easy to forget that kids in school today weren’t even born in 2001; to them, the events of 9/11 are ancient history. I Survived is the kind of book that can jump-start their interest by dropping them right into the thick of the events of that day. Lucas is a football-obsessed teen who makes a series of completely relatable bad decisions that leave him right at Ground Zero just as the planes hit the towers. Told in age-appropriate but heart-stopping detail, this book captures a perfect snapshot of the confusion, fear, heroism, and resolve on display that extraordinary day. 

The Dragon and the Stone is something that I very much want to share with my children when they grow older.

As an adult I enjoyed the creativity and sense of wonder that marked many of the stories I read and heard as a youth.

I was delighted by the beautiful fantasy that Kathryn created. I found myself getting lost in her words in the most wonderful way.

This is exactly what fantasy strives to be.

Wordless picture books are sometimes a bit tricky. How do you “read” them anyways?

But Journey (and its sequels Quest and Return) allow you to dive into the gorgeous artwork and compelling story. Just soak it all in, and you’ll want to set off on your own adventure by the time you're done.

Most novels, fantasy or otherwise, use portals to travel between worlds—but why stop there? Story Thieves certainly doesn’t! It takes the whole concept of fictional worlds and brings it one step further—characters can physically step in and out of books, and even influence their contents.

Sounds interesting? I certainly found it to be, and read through each novel in this series within days of its release, not to mention several times later throughout the years. Should you be looking for a bit of fresh air in your library, this is certainly one choice worth considering.

This middle-grade novel introduces us to a real place—the Colored Orphan Asylum in New York City—and invites us to imagine the historical children who lived there as freedom fighters. Those fights for freedom, it turns out, take place on the back of dinosaurs! While the surprising addition of dinosaur battles might seem like a diversion from the hard work of learning about slavery’s painful history, in Older’s hands, the dinos offer young readers a way to meditate on power and its abuses. Viewed in the context of a Black radical tradition that insists on alternate timescapes, Freedom Fire’s dinosaurs do not function as a bit of whimsical unreality that overwrites difficult historical truths. Instead, their discordant presence actually offers a space for readers—children and educators both—to better inhabit the surreal, disorienting history of enslavement and freedom in the United States.

This book had everything I could ever desire in an escape—monsters, magic, and mayhem. Brine Seaborne, a very precocious girl, gets wrapped up in the adventures of pirates as they head out on a quest to find the Magical North. Intertwined with the creative, beguiling magic are conversations that resonated deeply for me, ones about what makes a person a monster and who gets to hold positions of power (I actually stopped and jotted down a couple quotes while reading! Those notes are still in my phone today!). Voyage to the Magical North sits on my “favorites” shelf because of the thoughtful questions that are buried just beneath the surface of the quest Brine and her companions embark on.