Island of the Blue Dophins

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	• Island of the Blue Dolphins Scott O'Dell Yearling, 1987 - 192 pages average customer review:based on 606 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Determination to Survive

It is the 1800s and Karana, an Indian girl, lives with her tribe on a warm island called the Island of the Blue Dolphins. The lives of the people in her tribe are mostly peaceful, but over the years they have had some problems. A group of Russians occasionally comes to their island to camp and hunt the otter that live right off the coast. The last time they came, they treated the people of the island badly.

Now Karana is twelve and her father is the chief of their tribe and the Russians have come again to hunt. They promise things will be better this time and Karana's father reluctantly agrees to let them stay and hunt, for a price. At the end of their time hunting, though, the Russians try to get away without paying the fair price for the otter they have hunted. A battle ensues, and most of the men of the tribe, including Karana's father, are killed before the Russians get away.

When the rest of Karana's tribe leaves to find help, Karana finds herself in a position where she has to fight to survive until someone returns for her.

I liked Karana's determination to stay alive and the fact that she never gave up, even when she worried the ship would never come back for her. Some parts of this book got boring, though, especially when long stretches of time passed when nothing new was happening. Karana spent a lot of time gathering food, which wasn't very exciting.

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ITS OK

Well after I finished reading it, it turned out ok but I didn't really like the ending. All that build up and it doesn't really stop anywhere it was a huge let down. Even though the build up is kind of good there's a LOT of death which really annoyed me but I really enjoyed the devil fish. I think its ether a giant squid or an octopus but anyways it's cool.

Im a little glad they did kill of everyone early so we didn't get to attached to them and be devastated when he/she died. I did think the author was very descriptive through. He would say things like "some of the teeth were as long as my hand and half its width. They were curved at the tops and some were broken, but when I had ground the best of them and put them down with the sand, I had work four good spears points, broad at the bottom and very sharp at the ends."
So I would give this book 3 out of 5.

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Mediocre

I thought that this book was mediocre. I didn't think the book had much detail in it. But if you want to read a short book and like survival stories, I think that Island of the Blue Dolphins would be a good book to read. Island of the Blue Dolphins is just a typical survival story. I didn't think it had a really good ending, I think that the Arthur should of at least put an epilogue or something, because it kind of just left me wondering what she did with the rest of her life.
The character that I liked the most was the main character Karana. Through out the story Krana remains brave and independent. I think that Karana changes throughout the story, like her beliefs and everything. For example, at the beginning of the story, Karana has the same beliefs and expectations as the rest of her tribe. One of the "rules" of Karana's tribe is that girls and women cannot make weapons; they believe if a girl makes a weapon, it will break in her hand while she is using them. But at the end of the book, her beliefs have changed, whatever is needed to survive. Like in the middle of the book, she makes several weapons, not only for her survival, but to revenge her little brother. I think that this book teaches a great lesson of forgiveness. I think that it teaches someone to see beyond and forgive what a person has done in their past.

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Island of the Blue Dophins

Manuel Ruiz
June 11, 2007

Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O' Dell is about a girl named Karana who is the main character. Her dad is the chief and her brother is Ramo. There a village that is not that big and they're ante technology. So Karana and Ramo saw a ship and they were looking at it so they went to tell their dad. So when the people came down they told the chief that they wanted to hunt otter. So the Russian leader was telling the chief that they would divide the otter so it could be fair. The Russian leader took some otters without sharing his part so they got mad and started a fight, but it ended. So the chief was killed by the Russians and then they fled but in a few days later they came back. So they were told to leave with them so all of them got ready to leave so Karana was on the ship but she notes that Ramo wasn't there so she jumped off the ship. When she found Ramo they already were too far to catch so she lived in the village but she also berried all of the dead bodies that were around the Island. She saw a pack of wild dogs and they ran off they saw them and Ramo asked, "will the ship come back?" because he didn't want to stay in the Island. Then in the morning she was looking for Ramo so then she found him. So she made weapons so she could protect herself from those wild dogs. The weapons that she made were made of different materials because she hardly could get good material. Then Karana waited for ship but when the fist storm of winter came she new that she wasn't going to be helped. She found canoes so she saw they were old but she found one that was alright and took off but the water would get in the canoe so she just returned to the Island. So she was trying to find a place to store the food that she had so she went to a place where there was lair of the wild dogs. She made a fence of whale bones that had been washed of before the villagers left. She felt secured because the fence so when she cooked, foxes came but they couldn't get in and one day the pack of the dogs saw her tracks that she had left but she sprinted off before they saw her. So she went to the cave of the dogs and she made a fire and some dogs ran off but the leader went towards her and she killed two dogs but not the leader because she just wounded him. So she looked for him and she cured him and gave him food. Then the dog would always be in her gate waiting for her so them she named him Rontu that means fox eyes. She still looked for a ships but it seemed they forgot about her and when Rontu robbed a special fish she would talk to him but he acted like he didn't understand her. So Rontu and her set sail in a canoe and we were just seeing the Island. So then they climbed on top of a cliff and we noticed that the pack of dogs circled us and with its new leader. To be continued!

So I thought the book was amazing and it was the best book that I ever have seen. It didn't have anything that I didn't like it was the bomb and if I could I would give it the award of the best book. So you just have to get a copy of it because you will also like this book.

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The Review

Island of the Blue Dolphins had been sitting on my bookshelf for a long time, so when I had the option of reading it I really wanted to. I don't really think I ever took a serious look at it, so I never really knew that it was so short. At first the book really annoyed me with its bad descriptions and recurring deaths. There were so many, "There I crouched on my hands and knees. Below me lay the cove. The tide was out and the sun shone on the white sand of the beach" (p.12). I don't see why the author couldn't add some zest and life to that description.
At the end of the book I found that I wasn't very happy. I really think that she made a bad decision. But, at the end, I also found that I had liked the book. The plot line was interesting, and even if there wasn't very much action at some points, the author talked about how she made houses out of whale bones and saved injured animals. I think that maybe this book was made for younger kids, but maybe even adults could enjoy it. One of the things I liked was how different the main character's life was from mine. Women had so few rights it scared me, "I then got to my feet and fitted an arrow to the bow, although I suddenly remembered my father's warnings that, because I was a woman, the bow would brake". I was really happy that she decided to forget all that she had been taught about what women could and couldn't do. All in all, I would recommend this as a good read for 8-11 year-olds.

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reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, page 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16

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