Turtle in Paradise
A Newbery Honor novel set in 1935 Key West — smart, tough 11-year-old Turtle arrives in the Florida Keys to discover ragtag cousins, family secrets, and maybe even buried treasure.
It’s 1935, and eleven-year-old Turtle is no Shirley Temple. She’s smart, tough, and has seen enough of the world not to expect a Hollywood ending. When her dreamy mother lands a housekeeping job that doesn’t allow children, Turtle is shipped off to Key West, Florida to stay with relatives she’s never met.
Florida is like nothing Turtle has ever seen — hot and strange, full of wild green, ragtag boy cousins, family secrets, and hints of buried pirate treasure. Before she knows it, Turtle finds herself coming out of the shell she’s spent her whole life building.
A New York Times bestseller and Newbery Honor winner, inspired by author Jennifer L. Holm’s own family stories. Also available as a graphic novel adaptation illustrated by Savanna Ganucheau — a great entry point for younger or reluctant readers.
Thoughts from a Looper:
Reading Turtle in Paradise felt a little like time-traveling back through places we’ve actually dropped anchor.
As an adult (and especially after cruising through the Florida Keys) I found it bringing me down memory lane and very interesting. The story is set during the Great Depression, but it’s not the version of history you get from a textbook. It’s scrappy and sunburned and full of resourceful kids making their own fun in a place that still feels, in some ways, just a little off the edge of the map.
What struck me most were all the small cultural breadcrumbs. There are references to Shirley Temple (which sent me down a whole nostalgia spiral), mentions of penny candy and ice cream being a rare treat, and the way kids roamed freely… something that feels both familiar and completely foreign now. There’s also the backdrop of the Great Depression, woven in lightly but meaningfully, and even hints of the WPA-era changes happening in Florida at the time.
And then there’s the setting itself. If you’ve spent any time in the Keys, you can almost feel it while reading: dusty roads, tight-knit communities, the mix of independence and isolation. Knowing what we know now about the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 adds an extra layer, too. It’s not the focus of the story, but it lingers in the background in a way that hits differently when you’ve traveled those waters.
One fun connection—this story pairs nicely with Full of Beans, which takes place just before Turtle in Paradise and follows Beans (one of Turtle’s cousins) from his perspective. It gives a little more context to life in Key West leading up to Turtle’s arrival, and together the two books paint a fuller picture of the time and place.
Maybe it didn’t hit home quite the same for my kids, but they did enjoy getting to take their imagination back to our time exploring Key West when we visited from our boat. And for me, that blend of story + place + history made it a really worthwhile read—even if it landed a little differently across generations.
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