A couple of years ago, Brian Floca was on an island off the coast of Maine when a storm rolled in.

“There was this kind of electric charge in the air,” he remembers. It was hypnotic — “Just the sensory feeling of the storm coming. The wind, the waves, all of these elemental forces unloading themselves on the island.” But also the feeling of — “Is this safe? Should I really be doing this?”

That memory stuck with Floca — and inspired him. His new children’s book, Island Storm , is about two kids who feel a storm coming, pull on their boots and head to the sea. As the waves crash and the rain starts to fall harder and harder, they ask each other, “Is this enough? Or do we try for more?” Of course, this being a story about kids and their escapades, they decide to go on. Past boarded-up

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