City News

Island of the Blue Dolphins is a 1960’s children novel by Scott O’Dell, which tells the story of a 12-year-old girl named Karana, who becomes suddenly stranded alone on an island off the California coast. Throughout this book, she demonstrates her incredible survival skills and ability to adapt to her surroundings all while being at such a young age.

Karana has a little brother named Ramo as well as a sister named Ulape. Her people live in a village called Ghalas-at and the tribe mainly survives by gathering roots and fishing. The story opens with a conflict between Captain Orlov, a Russian, and the chief of the village. The chief of the village is named Chowig and is also Karana’s father. Captain Orlov had brought a group of native Americans called the Aleuts and had asked Chowig if they could stay to hunt the island’s otters and give the village payment in return. However, when the Aleuts get ready to leave they double cross and don’t pay, resulting in a battle in which Chowig and other villagers are killed.

A new chief, Kimki, rises to power and believes that the people of Ghalas-at should leave the island. He then sets sait alone to find a county that he had visited when he was a boy. After being gone for a long time, a ship with white sails and white men arrive at the island and state that they were sent by Kimki to escort them off the island. Since the sky is stormy, the villagers have to hurriedly board the boat. Unfortunately, it turns out that Ramo had left his favorite hunting spear on the beach and brashly exited the boat to retrieve it. Karana chases after him and they then find themselves stranded on the island alone together.

Ramo and Karana work hard to provide food for themselves. One day, however, Karana finds Ramo was killed by a group of wild dogs. This of course completely shocks Karana as she is now more alone than ever. Karana begins by building herself a house and crafting stronger weapons. This is because Karana plans to get revenge on the pack of animals. I will not spoil too much beyond that, but this sets the tone for how the rest of the story will play out.

I believe that this book does a great job of exploring what it truly is like to live alone on an island. There are so many dangers in the outside world, and the author depicts Karana handling them in clever ways. Although being isolated from any sort of human contact for years, Karana has proven that she can defend herself and is capable of surviving solo.

Although this book is somewhat short, I think it tells a great compact story with ideas of perseverance and adaptability. I know that there is a movie about this book made in 1964, and I did end up watching it. However, I think they only did an OK job of portraying the book. In my personal opinion, I feel as if they left out some important events that were in the book. Despite this, I would highly recommend this novel to any teen who would enjoy a superb survival tale.

Check out Island of the Blue Dolphins from NBPL!