Title: Seacrow Island
(Seacrow Island #1)
Author: Astrid Lindgren
(Translated by Evelyn Ramsden)
Year: 1964
Country: Sweden

Format: E-book
Pages: 274
Read: 17 – 29 March 2026
First reading

Melker Melkerson is a widowed father with an impulsive, childlike nature. He rents a cottage for the summer, sight unseen, just because he likes the name of the location: Seacrow Island. When Melker and his four children arrive on the island, they’re distressed to find the cottage cold, leaky and dilapidated. But over the summer they befriend the residents of Seacrow Island, grow to love the cottage, and gradually come to think of the place as home. Wouldn’t it be nice to live there all year round?

I liked Seacrow Island well enough, I suppose: I read the whole thing… but it just didn’t sing to me. Perhaps I was hoping for too much. I found it in a list of recommendations for Moomin fans. Having recently finished the entire Moomin series, I was looking for something else to scratch that itch. Seacrow Island… didn’t. If there is another fictional family like the Moomins, the Melkersons ain’t it!

They’re a sweet enough bunch of characters—especially the youngest brother Pelle, a devoted animal lover. But I found it hard to care much about the Melkersons’ adventures on Seacrow Island. The whole thing felt quite predictable to me. I could tell from the first chapter they would grow to love the island and decide to move there permanently. Watching that inevitable story unfold didn’t strike me as particularly compelling.