I finished reading this book last night. If you want a book to encourage you to give up everything and find a nice deserted island to live on, this is the one. I don't think your experience will be the same as their's, however. I have to say I wasn't incredibly impressed with the realism.
It's about a French family on an island apparently near New Zealand (there is a kangaroo mentioned). In the film, they were headed for New Guinea. They were shipwrecked, though the entire ship lasted quite a while on the reef where it was stranded (the family had to blow the whole thing up when they were done with it). It was definitely a book more suited to a less cynical or realistic reader (not to say I am cynical, since I'm not). Though cutting the inside out of a tree to make a virtual winding staircase to the canopy above would kill the tree. If food supplies seemed to be getting low, one only needed to pull any random plant out of the ground. It would invariably turn into potatoes or some other form of edible root. You want coconuts? Walk under a tree and a monkey will throw one at you. Every wild animal they caught was easily tamed by simply puffing tobacco smoke at it or biting its ears (as in the case of the onager). The wildlife of this strange island reminded me a of the television show LOST. There was a 30 foot boa constrictor (who ate the donkey), flamingos, kangaroos, bears, ostriches, salmon (in New Zealand?), a beached whale, tigers, at least two lions, monkeys, parrots of all kinds, huge land crabs, hippos, buffalo, eagles and walruses among others. An eagle is caught and trained to hunt other birds for the family (in fact, the eagle kills a male ostrich and is instrumental in helping the boys catch another ostrich which is trained to be a mount).
PETA would be incensed if it were around in those days (not that I care what PETA thinks), as Mr. Robinson and his sons shot everything in sight whether they needed it for food or not. Instead of helping the poor beached whale back into the ocean, they stripped blubber off for oil (lamps) and skin to make leather harnesses for the other animals, then left the rest for the seagulls and birds.
This book, in my opinion, was written simply for entertainment purposes. It was perhaps written in the same manner, or at least with the same beginning, as the one I've written, pure fun and fancy. "Let's write about a family who gets shipwrecked on an island." There is no tragedy of loss. Civilization is lost, though it is spurned by most of the family at the end anyway. In the immense farm of animals, the only deaths chronicled are the "old" donkey (eaten), which was probably on its last leg anyway, and Juno (the dog) who'd lived at least 12 years to that point (killed by a tiger). The trained eagle also died after being with Fritz the entire story, but so many things are happening at that point it is barely referred to. Nor is there any deep political meaning of trying to escape the evil empire or kingdom of taxation and tyranny. On the contrary, this French family welcomes the colonization of their proud New Switzerland by the English whose ship found them.
Now for the rating:
Flow - 8
Believability - 4
Suspension of Reality - 5
Message - 3
Intrinsics - 5
Total - 24
So I think for the moment, I'll put this book at 60 on my list of the top 100.
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