Mysterious and spooky, Jess Kidd's The Night Ship tells the tales of a little girl in 1629 and a little boy in 1989. In 1629, motherless Mayken is on the ship Batavia, bound for the Dutch East Indies. But its passengers are soon shipwrecked on an island with little food and water, and there is no rescue in sight.
Fast forward to 1989, and Gil finds himself "shipwrecked" in a sense on this same island, Batavia's Graveyard. Gil's mother has died, and he has to move to the island to live with his fisherman grandfather.
Gil thinks the island, which is being excavated for human remains and other finds from the shipwreck, is haunted by ghosts, and indeed, the islanders talk of a little ghost girl named Little May. Mayken (perhaps the Little May that haunts the island) feels that her ship is haunted by a sea monster and sets out to catch it. Both children learn that it's the living you have to fear, not ghosts and monsters.
I liked reading about the two children and how so much of their lives mirrored each other, just 300-some years apart.
What's perhaps most alluring about this novel is that it is based on a real event. There really was a ship called Batavia that crashed and stranded its passengers on what is known as Beacon Island off Western Australia. And many of the characters included in the novel are based on real people. Don't skip the epilogue because it explains some of the historical parts of the novel. This inspired me to do a Google search to learn more!
The Night Ship is published by Atria Books and will be available to purchase tomorrow (October 4, 2022)! I received a free review copy.
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