Review: "Island of the Blue Dolphins" by Scott O'Dell

Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell
Published 1960
★★★★

I fell deep into a childhood reread phase and this is where I landed. Island of the Blue Dolphins is a fictionalized attempt at the life of Juana Maria (real name unknown), who survived some 18 years alone on an island after her tribe evacuated and she was left behind.

So little is known about Juana Maria that this is really guesswork, but it feels like well-researched guesswork at least. O'Dell set himself a herculean task—not only is next to nothing known about Juana Maria's life, but this is a children's/middle grade book following a character who spends the bulk of her life alone, with nobody to talk to, and over the course of the book she ages from 12 to about 30, which is quite the age range to ask kids to stay invested in. But it works, and this stands the test of time.

Karana—as the woman is called in this story—is about as resiliant as you can get, because she has to be. She has the skills for a life largely outdoors (and when the skills she needs are traditionally men's skills, at least she's seen the work done), but she has to learn what it is to be entirely self-reliant, to have no community to fall back on. O'Dell keeps things at a bit of a distance (it's theoretically but not viscerally devastating, for example, when much of the tribe is slaughtered), but I love how he lets Karana be both practical and human. She knows what work she needs to do to carry on—to not just carry on but to thrive—and she gets on and does it, and she also does things likes explores parts of the island that she's never had cause to visit, and makes herself new jewellery, and sews herself a cormorant feather skirt because she thinks it's beautiful. She's a wonderfully strong character. (And! The book passes the Bechdel test!)

O'Dell's version ends with Karana on the cusp of starting over, again. What is striking to me is what he doesn't say in the author's note: he doesn't tell readers that by the time Juana Maria arrived in California, most of her Nicoleño tribe had died (largely due to diseases that they had no immunity to), and he doesn't tell readers that Juana Maria, too, died only weeks after arrival, struck down by dysentery. What records there are suggest that she was thrilled to be among people again, so I can't really argue that she would have been better off left on the island, but how tragic that her rescue also caused her early death, and that in that time not even her name could be communicated.

One other thing of note: in the book, when Karana sees the ship approaching, she puts on her cormorant skirt to greet her rescuers; the skirt (or dress) is true to historical record. O'Dell makes a gentle point about westerners imposing their cultural/dress/religious standards on her; one of the first things the white men from the ship do is have a dress made for her out of spare trousers—presumably, though O'Dell does not say this specifically, to cover her breasts. It's not lost on me that many of the book covers do the same (put a dress on her to cover her up though that's likely not historically accurate). Not that I'm expecting a children's book to...well...do otherwise...but with that context I'm finding that I prefer the covers that circumvent the issue by avoiding full-body depictions.

At the end of it, this stands up to time...but it's worth reading more about the story behind the story.