Each year, with the increase in number of children's books, it is often necessary to retreat from the volume of present publication to reexamine those works which have, for various reasons, endured to become classics. One such work is Scott O'Dell's Island of the Blue Dolphins….

Although the desert island motif has been a standard fictional theme since Shakespeare's Tempest and Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, O'Dell is faced with several new problems. Because he is writing children's fiction, he must create a story in which narrative pacing is relatively fast. His specific subject matter, the lonely eighteen years spent by Karana on the Island of the Blue Dolphins, raises difficulties…. For a large part of her story, Karana does very little except engage in the diurnal chores of survival. How, then, has O'Dell created a story which continues to grip young readers fourteen years after its publication?

First, the...