Dolphin Singers — Francesca Hampton

The distance from California to Hawaii is more than 2500 miles, a daunting journey for any yacht. But for five young people, it has come to seem the only way back to families they have lost. Hiding from pursuers, learning as they go, they rely on Jason, and the eldest at 14, to captain the yacht Makai. But when Jason is injured in a storm, and his friend Jimmy comes down with bronchitis, it is up to his plucky sister Jenny, and Jenny's beautiful, troubled friend Michelle to get them and five-year-old Christopher through it. Storms are not the only peril at sea however. Lost and starving themselves, they come across a pod of dolphins trapped in a drift net. With the days going by and their hunger and thirst growing, the youngsters find that these new found friends may make all the difference. From Dolphin Singers: “Its great length and weight unsecured in the panic, the mainsail boom came swinging hard above Jenny's head as the schooner jibed again. It raked across the cockpit, hit Jason's head with a resounding crack and continued far enough to smack Jimmy and Michelle on the knees and knock them down on the boat deck. Not until it had swung its full 180 degrees arc and yanked the boat almost onto her side did it come to rest in its new position, dragging the downed sail behind it across the width of the vessel and partially out over the water. When it was done, only Jenny remained at the job Jason had set her, her small hands clutching the knobs on the wheel until her knuckles whitened as Michelle and Jimmy cried in pain and Christopher screamed in terror down below. She cast a desperate glance at her older brother, but there could be no more advice from him. Half-buried under the blue-grey splotched mainsail, Jason was unconscious…”