The Lily Pond by Annika Thor
Thor, A. (2012). The Lily Pond. Yearling Books. 9780385740401
Taking place one year after the first book, A Farawy Island, Stephie and her younger sister, Nellie, have now been living on a Swedish island for a little over a year. Now that Stephie and her sister have had time to adjust, it's time for Nellie to return to school. Placed in a new school with many new faces and problems, Stephie must learn to navigate this new world while balancing her worry for her parents, who are back in Nazi-occupied Vienna, and a new crush.
Being in a new home, without parents, and separated from your only sibling can be hard, and Annika Thor did a great job portraying Stephie's feelings through that process. Stephie is only thirteen, and like most thirteen-year-old girls, she wants to have fun and enjoy her life. Still, she always has the feeling of underlying guilt, and that is most evident in the scenes where Stephie is reading letters from her parents, who are still stuck in Nazi-occupied Vienna. While her friends enjoy the year, Stephie and her sister worry about whether her parents can make it to America. While seeing movies used to be an everyday regular occurrence, now, under Stephie's new religion, seeing a movie is considered a "temptation" and requires punishment from God (or, in Stephie's case, her Aunt Marta). Scenes like this in the book and the inner dialogue we as readers experience through Stephie's inner turmoil let us see how different Stephie's life was before everything happened. Her life, her experiences, her culture, and even her language had to change, essentially overnight, so she and her sister could adapt to survive.
Annika Thor also slightly (and briefly) touches on the privilege that other characters have that Stephie and her sister do not. One example of this is when Sven, the boy in the room next to hers and her crush, is freely able to talk about the war and publicly voices that he believes some of his teachers are Nazi sympathizers. While Sven is freely able to speak, you see Stephie, on the other hand, being treated more harshly by her German teacher for being a refugee. Along with stark differences like those, Annika Thor does include some historical blurbs that also give context to the situation of Stephie's life before the Swedish Island to the present day, such as the paragraph that mentions how once the Nazis arrived, movies, concerts and the theater were prohibited for Jewish people. Or, in a different chapter, we have Stephie and Sven discussing how the Germans also occupied France, Belgium, and the Netherlands and how, most recently, the Germans have begun to drop bombs on various places. Giving tidbits of information like that leans into the book being a historical fiction piece. As the book progresses, we see and experience the alienation that Stephie feels, and that is most likely only a tiny part of the reality that genuine refugees felt when in the same situation as Stephie and her sister. Despite it all, Stephie and her sister never gave up, and if anything, the situations she has been through only made her stronger and more determined to succeed in life.
If you enjoyed reading this book, check out the first book of the series, A Faraway Island, and see what happens next in the trilogy's final book called Deep Sea. Another story set in a similar setting that may be suited for older readers is Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys. After reading, I encourage all readers to reflect on their experiences and compare them to see if their feelings or a specific experience or situation had them feeling like Stephie did in certain situations. For those left curious about real-life refugees during WWII times, I recommend you visit the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's Holocaust Encyclopedia page, which can be accessed here.
What do readers think?
Booklist reviews say that Stephie is "resilient in spite of her youth" and "a believable teen," and overall, the book is "a compelling look at World War II era Sweden."
Awards for the Lily Pond
- Mildred L. Batchelder Honor Book
- ALA-ALSC Notable Children's Book
Booklist. (2012, January 1). Lily Pond. Booklist Online. https://www.booklistonline.com/The-Lily-Pond-Amy-Rubinate/pid=5125155
Penguin Random House. (n.d.). The Lily Pond. Penguin Random House. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/207043/the-lily-pond-by-annika-thor-translated-from-the-swedish-by-linda-schenck/
Thor, A. (2012). The Lily Pond. Yearling Books. 9780385740401
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. (n.d.). United States holocaust memorial museum. https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/refugees
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