I'm sort of backing back into this potential series of blog posts. You might recall that I thought I'd start reading my way through the Newbery Medal winners (outstanding children's book). But the first one was so horrible, I quickly got stalled. Now, I'm jumping ahead to the 40th winner because I was asked about it.
This weekend, someone asked me if I'd read The Island of the Blue Dolphins because her pre-teen son loved it and read it over and over. She thought this was fantastic, since the protagonist is a girl, but that did not bother him. No, I hadn't read it. Well, at least I'd heard of it, but that was all. A writer of good (hopefully) children's books needs to be a reader of good children's books.
In my defense, I'll mention that the book was written in 1961. I was in 8th grade. And I'm sure my school library didn't get it until a few years after that. By then, I was not reading children's books.
I found it free online at Internet Archive., then search for Island of the Blue Dolphins. You will need a free account.
This book has been listed by some sources as one of the most popular novels of the 20th Century. (Seriously? How did I completely miss this?). Anyway, it's a great story.
Current criticisms include that it's a Caucasian writer attempting to tell the story of a Native American and that many parts of the cultural narrative are not accurate. Well, OK. But it's a fictional story, based on the merest kernal of truth. Perhaps the author, Scott O'Dell, could have done more research. But millions of people must be glad he wrote it. It's a classic coming-of-age tale. There is also apparently a genre called Robinsonade, after the Robinson Crusoe story (people suddenly separated from civilization), into which this book fits.
The kernal of truth is that there was a real woman who was rescued from the island of San Nicolas (off the California coast) in 1853. She had lived there alone for 18 years and had tamed a wild dog to be her companion. She had been left behind when the remnant of her people were taken to California in 1835 by ship. Variations on the story have it that she jumped overboard and swam back to the island when she learned that her child/younger brother was not on the ship. After she was rescued, there was no one left who understood her language, and she died just 7 weeks later of dysentery. The real woman was probably in her 20s when she was stranded.
O'Dell takes this skeleton and gives us Karana, a girl of 12, who jumps overboard and swims back to the island because her younger brother is not on the ship. The brother is soon killed by the wild dogs and Karana is left alone to survive.
Supposedly, some of the native skills and customs are totally imagined by O'Dell, but the struggle to come to terms with her plight and to find enough self-reliance to survive is a theme that resonates with young people of any culture. The book is told from Karana's point of view, and does not attempt to explore the depths of emotions she must have felt. Karana mostly sticks to the "facts." and lets the reader add the details. She does occasionally mention being lonesome, or says how much joy she found in the company of the dog she manages to tame.
Personally, I liked this straightforward narrative. It rang true to me that a person who has been raised where every meal, tool, item of clothing, etc is only to be had by finding or making it yourself would have a matter-of-fact attitude toward dealing with the world. The greatest struggle Karana mentions is to overcome the tribal tabu against females making weapons, yet she had to defend herself from the dogs, and she needed to catch food beyond the abalones she could collect from the rocks. I don't know if this cultural norm was real or made-up, but I can believe that would have been an extremely difficult psychological situation.
The story was made into a movie in 1964. I watched the trailer on YouTube, but it was awful. Maybe it wasn't awful in 1964, but compared with the book, it was jarringly fake. Some movies age well. This one does not.
In other news: The vendor event wrapped up. I haven't done the final paperwork, but I did well. That is good.
 | See Newbery 1 - The Story of Mankind
See Newbery Medal Through the Years |
3 comments:
Sounds like an interesting book. I've found that most movies are never as good as the book.
Glad to hear the vendor event went well.
Lulu: "Our Dada says he never read this one back in school, but he knows people who did! I don't think he's planning to read it now but he probably would have enjoyed it, back in the day."
Ann- only a few movies are better.
Lulu- well at least he wasn't already too old when it was written.
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