Winner, Australian Children's Book of the Year, 1967
No one had talked about fuel; what was the use of talking, anyway? But they all knew that engines which run on fuel have to run out of fuel sometime, and that the Egret just couldn't keep on going for ever. They seemed to have been sitting in this plane, imprisoned, for days, waiting to die. Gerald just flew on and on as though he wanted to fly away to another world, almost as though he didn't want to go down, almost as though he didn't know how to go down.
When the Egret's pilot dies suddenly mid-flight six teenagers, the only passengers on board, face a terrifying situation. Gerald has had some flying lessons, but he has never flown alone, and he has never landed a plane. Lost and afraid, they fly on as the fuel gauge drops and night closes in. Will they find a clear landing place? Could they land in the sea? If they do somehow land safely how will they find their way back to civilisation?
Ivan Southall's To the Wild Sky is a breathtaking adventure - real kids facing a very real danger with no one but themselves to rely on.
Ivan Southall was the first Australian author to receive the Carnergie Medal, and was awarded the Australian Children's Book Council Book of the Year on three occasions. An icon of Australian children's literature, he wrote over sixty books in his lifetime and has been published in twenty-three different countries. He died in 2008.
'The book that shines brightest is Ivan Southall's To the Wild Sky. This was a proudly Australian story and the first novel to utterly confound me by denying the usual happy-ever-after...That was the moment I first understood the magic an author has in their hands.' Tim Pegler, author of Five Parts Dead
