What if society as we knew it ended through a series of natural disasters? And a woman (who resembles the classic cookie-baking grandmother) rose up to organize those left in the wake of a ruined world and created a new order? One where the skies and earth are regulated so that bad weather and catastrophe is nonexistent? Where there is no such thing as disorder?

This is the world the author creates for Honor Greenspoon- ten years old when the book starts, fourteen when it ends. We don't know the More...

I am a sucker for a good apocalypse, but this is the best one I've found in a while. Goodman's dystopic future world mostly builds on familiar ideas. The earth is flooded except for a few scattered islands, the oceans are the enemy, and the Earth Mother rules the remaining population with the weapons of fear, paranoia, and overwhelming pressure to conform. But this book is so beautifully written, and so gripping, I couldn't put it down. It's better than The Giver. For reals.

Other Side covers Ho More...

Reviewed by Tasha for TeensReadToo.com

It's the eighteenth year of Enclosure and everything on the islands in the Tranquil Sea have become regulated. Earth Mother and her Corporation, who have a vision for a world with only happiness, control everything from jobs to the weather to children's names - and expect everyone to conform to this view of normality, no matter what the consequence. On Island 365 lives a girl named Honor and her family, who don't really fit into this society.

While Honor des More...

Goodman, Allegra. 2008. The Other Side of the Island.

First paragraph chapter one: All this happened many years ago, before the streets were air-conditioned. Children played outside then, and in many places the sky was naturally blue. A girl moved to a town house in the Colonies on Island 365 in the Tranquil Sea.

Back cover: About this island, Honor knows this much is true: Enclosure means safe and secure. Different is dangerous. Disappear means no one here. And Earth Mother is always watching.

Jac More...

Global warming has caused the polar ice caps to melt and sea levels to rise; consequently, much of the Earth’s land has disappeared, leaving only high-lying islands. A corporation run by a woman known as Earth Mother now rules all of the islands. Honor and her family have moved to Island 365, and from the outset it looks like they’ll have a hard time fitting in. First of all, Honor’s name is all wrong. Everyone born in her year has a name that begins with H, but Honor’s name has a silent H and i More...

"Honor y su familia acaban de mudarse a la plácida Isla 365 en el mar Tranquil. Allí todo parece perfecto: el cielo está controlado digitalmente para que siempre tenga un agradable color azul y nunca llueva, en las calles siempre hace la temperatura ideal, las personas jamás se pelean, nunca hay nadie triste y todo está envuelto por una angustiosa calma que la joven es incapaz de comprender. Todos los habitantes de la isla rezan día y noche a la Madre Tierra y le dan gracias porque les permitier More...

The alt-text for two stars here on Goodreads says that a ranking of two stars means "it was ok," and that sums up my feelings about The Other Side of the Island. It's certainly not a bad book, not even a bad contribution to environmental-disaster-dystopian fiction for young adults, but "okay" is about the most enthusiasm I can muster, considering the questions I was left with and overall lack of excitement throughout the book.

There are some good subtle touches in the book - I like how references More...

Clement Leveau
The Other Side of the Island
This book is about this girl named Honor. She lives in a post-apocalyptic world where there was a massive flood that submerged the world with only the mountain tops remaining. Now because of that flood a dystopian society called the corporation rules the world and is trying to establish something called new weather which corrects floods and storms. In this book Honor is made fun of and picked on because she is not ordinary. Her parents also behave like More...

If you like to read books about how the world might look in the future, this is a great one.

The book starts as Honor is 10. The wording is simple, as a child would see things; however, the point of view is 3rd. Honor doesn't fit in because she's come from the wild northern islands, she's been homeschooled, and her name has a silent H. Classes are determined by the first letter of your names. Names come from approved lists. The teachers say people will be confused and hear an O in Honor, believi More...

My kind of book, once again dystopian fiction that I always enjoy. With a relatable teenage girl as the lead character, I know I'll be able to encourage 7th and 8th grade girls who don't think of themselves as sci-fi fans (or may not want to admit that they are) to read this book. The story takes place on a small island after most of the Earth has been covered by water. The island has a dome cover to protect it from severe weather. When it's necessary to overthrow the evil dictator and let the p More...

Another dystopia! This one reminds me a lot of The Giver, but with a clearer setting, more information about how this place has come to be, and actually more realistic options for the people in the story. Honor and her parents have been reassigned to live on Island 365 in the Tranquil Sea. Her parents don't quite fit in, and neither does she in this extremely regulated place. In their first apartment, the Neighborhood Watch arrives to tell them that they are not allowed to sing Honor to sleep to More...

When I started reading this book yesterday, I was concerned that some of the subject matter was similar to my own YA futuristic... but I didn't need to worry. Asides from a few minor similarities, it's completely different.

This book was great! I loved every minute of it. From start to finish, I couldn't wait to see what was going to happen to Honor and her family. On an island where the colours of the sky are controlled and everyone is expected to be the same, Honor's family seems to stick out. More...

Ten year old Honor and her mother and father have just been forcibly relocated to an island in the Tranquil Sea from their home in the Northern Islands. When Honor is being interviewed for her place in school, the headmistress stresses that her name is not Acceptable since the H is silent. Honor struggles to fit in while her parents secretly join the Forecasters, a group of rebels who want to displace Earth Mother who is bent on Enclosure - ceiling the islands against the onslaught of Weather. W More...

The Other Side of the Island gives up a stark picture of the future when evolving science and paranoia meld together to create a society ruled under utmost Totalitarianism.

Wow, some of the stuff the author thought up in here was pretty wicked. The concept of this book is fantastic and thoroughly developed. Some of the plot twists were predictable and others weren’t. The characters, especially Honor, were realistic with plenty of room for growth, and had their own vices and flaws.

The pacing of th More...

I have a weakness for dystopian novels, and this was a fine one. It's set sometime in the future where the world has flooded and all the land exposed land left is a dotting of islands. Someone is building domes to control the weather on the islands, though this doesn't always work perfectly. Children are taught to believe in this New Weather and to worship the Mother Earth who made it possible. Order is supreme - even down to pest control, names for your children, and how much "money" you are al More...

The Other Side of the Island is reasonably intersting but lacking a little in character development and surprises in the plot. It has some ideas to reflect on about what our values and what we see as problems in the world.

One thing that distinguishes The Other Side of the Island from other dystopian stories is that this is clearly set after the World suffers some of the effects of global warming. This aspect makes the story seem a bit more relevant and possible. Another distinguishing aspect is More...

This is another of those "scary future" worlds. Global warming has resulted in melted ice-cap, world-wide floods and destruction. As the book opens, one family has been "retrieved" from the north islands where they were basically hiding out, and assimilated into the current society of the southern islands. The government is under the control of Earth Mother who promises to protect and shield the planet from future destruction by use of weather control, and literal shields that stretch over the p More...

This was a pretty good book. It's about this new world led by Earth Mother who is a total freak. You don't ever meet her, but she's definitely a weird one.. enforcing the rules she enforced and coming up with that weather shit.

At the beginning of the book, I didn't know what to think about her parents. They seemed so irresponsible and they didn't seem to care what would happen to Honor, but as I got further and further in the book, I realized that maybe it was better that they did the things the More...

I spotted this book on my bookshelf, and was washed in the nostalgia of reading this story. I received the book as an arc book many years ago. That was before the blog, so naturally I wanted to share a review with my readers today.

I haven’t read a lot of dystopian novels at this point in my life, but I do love them. The Other Side of the Island has only increased my intrigue in this genre. What I loved about this novel is the idea of Mother Earth being something dangerous. The idea of Mother Ear More...

If I wanted to rate this book on how good the actual story is, I'd give it a 5. But that's not the only thing I'm rating this book on.

Well, first of all, the writing wasn't great. It was quite simple (which can be fine) but the story didn't develop enough for me to get past that. It was not detail oriented. The book was too short, there were a lot of opportunities for things to be explored that didn't happen. The ending was abrupt.

I was confused about Honor's age most of the time. It says that s More...

Honor Greenspoon lives in a world where the polar ice caps have melted, destroying what we know as continents, leaving only islands dispersed across the earth. Earth Mother and the Corporation have numbered the Islands and moved all the survivors to ones deemed proper for colonization. At the age of ten, Honor and her parents are moved to Island 365 where she attends the Old Colony School. She doesn't fit in. All the other girls from year H have names from the list like Helena and Hester. Honor' More...

This book is about a girl living in the future after a great flood destroys all but a few islands on earth. A woman named Earth Mother has risen to power and, together with a powerful organization of engineers called the Corporation, is trying to "ceil" the islands that remain so that adverse weather will never be able to destroy again. In order for Earth Mother's goals to be reached, she must have total cooperation from everyone. Parents may only have one child, and are only allowed to name the More...

3.5 stars. A satisfying, well-written addition to the ever-expanding category of YA dystopian fiction with an environmental twist. In this story, the earth's continents have been reduced to islands by the catastrophic effects of global warming, and Big Brother = Earth Mother, the seemingly benevolent leader who rules the "safe" and "secure" Colonies, where she's trying to establish New Weather and a new, authoritarian society "for the good of the planet." Ten-year-old Honor has recently moved to More...

I really wanted to like this book a lot more than I did. The plot was really good but the character development just wasn’t there. It felt like all of the characters were the same person with different names and there was no character growth. Honor as a 10-year-old was the same as Honor as a 14-year-old.

One aspect of the book that I did find really interesting was the conundrum that Honor’s parents were in. They, being revolutionaries, were having difficulty coming to terms with letting their ch More...

This was okay. Not great, not horrible, but okay. Honor and her family move to an island where Mother Earth (a woman) controls everything - the weather, their lives, the school curriculum, etc. Honor's parents resist this brainwashing, but Honor tries to conform until one day her parents vanish and she's forced to live in an orphanage, trying to figure out what is going on and how to right everything again. Parts were interesting; I liked the bits about how and why kids believe the things they'r More...

The Other Side of the Island is set in a world filled with only islands. After a series of natural disasters humanities numbers begin to dwindle people are left shaken and scared. In our time of need our savior Earth Mother and the Corporation come in and saves the day. Sheltering humanity one island at a time with New Weather. People believe that they are protecting them, or are they really just controlling them?

Honor and her family move to island 365 after they are caught living in the unmarke More...

C'est une lecture au ton monotone, et qui pourtant parvient à nous intéresser de bout en bout au sort des habitants de l'île, de Honor, ses parents et leurs amis. Le mystère qui plane laisse supposer des tas d'hypothèses, et franchement la fin n'était pas si évidente à trouver ! Le roman dénonce aussi la propagande, les régimes autoritaires, l'annihilation des esprits critiques, mais aussi les conséquences de nos actes sur la planète, les dérèglements climatiques etc. Enfin, et surtout, c'est au More...

A new age is upon the earth. After the Flood, the planet was reborn as a series of Islands, looked after by the glorious Earth Mother. She has created a calm and safe world, where anything inaccurate or unpredictable is a thing of the past.

For Honor, though, her life isn't as simple. The weather is much more predictable than her parents, who aren't as conscientious about following the rules as they should be. As Honor grows up, she has to decide to either fit in with everyone else or doubt the r More...