The death of both their parents catapults cousins Meline and Jocelyn into the household of their eccentric Uncle Marten, an independently wealthy hermit who, in earlier years, played the stock market so that he could now be alone and think about what interests him. Alone no longer, the arrival of the girls means adding a housekeeper, a butler, a zany helicopter pilot, and a romantic doctor into the household mix. The characters have one thing in common: they are each in their own unique ways learning to deal with the death of loved ones and the resulting loneliness. Set on an isolated island off the Vancouver coast with events narrated by alternating characters, the mystery surrounding Meline and Jocelyn’s family is solved only as the teenag ers begin to learn that running away from pain does not help start life again. 2008 Sheila A. Egoff Children’s Literature Prize, 2008 CLA Young Adult Book Award finalist. Polly Horvath has won the National Book Award, the Newbery Honor, the Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor, the Mr. Christie Award, the Young Adult Canadian Book of the Year, and has been listed on the White Raven’s list. sc

When an accident leaves teenage cousins Meline and Jocelyn parentless, they come to live with their unknown and eccentric Uncle Marten on his private island. They soon discover that the island has a history as tragic as their own: it was once an air force training camp, led by a mad commander whose crazed plan to train pilots to fly airplanes without instruments sent eleven pilots to their deaths. Jocelyn, Meline, and Uncle Marten are soon joined on this island of wrecked planes and wrecked men by an elderly Austrian housekeeper, a very mysterious butler, a cat, and a dog. But to Jocelyn and Meline, being in a strange new place around strange new people only underscores the fact that the world they once knew has ended.

Told in the alternating voices of four characters dealing with grief in different ways, Polly Horvath's new novel is a rich and complicated story about loss and the possibility— and impossibility—of beginning again.

The Corps of the Bare-Boned Plane is a 2008 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.