The Little Island (Dell Picture Yearling) [Paperback]

Margaret Wise Brown (Author), Leonard Weisgard (Illustrator)

Book Description

Release date: October 1, 1993 | Age Range: 3 - 7 years | Series: Dell Picture Yearling | Lexile Measure: 590L (What's this?)

Once there was a little island in the ocean. That little island changes as the seasons come and go. The storm and the day and night change it. So do the lobsters and seals and gulls that stop by. Then one day a kitten visits the little island and learns a secret that every child will enjoy.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Once there was a little island in the ocean. That little island changes as the seasons come and go. The storm and the day and night change it. So do the lobsters and seals and gulls that stop by. Then one day a kitten visits the little island and learns a secret that every child will enjoy.

From the Inside Flap

Once there was a little island in the ocean. That little island changes as the seasons come and go. The storm and the day and night change it. So do the lobsters and seals and gulls that stop by. Then one day a kitten visits the little island and learns a secret that every child will enjoy.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Age Range: 3 - 7 years
  
• Paperback: 48 pages
• Publisher: Dragonfly Books; Reissue edition (October 1, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 044040830X
• ISBN-13: 978-0440408307
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 0.1 x 7.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (44 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #26,360 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 40 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Children's Version of "No Man Is An Island" by John Donne April 16, 2001

By Donald Mitchell HALL OF FAMETOP 100 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Library Binding

You may not recognize the author's name. But do you know that Golden MacDonald was a pen name for Margaret Wise Brown of Goodnight Moon fame? The text of this book captures the subtle rhythms of her appreciation for nature, and the connections that all beings and objects in nature have with one another. The book also won a Caldecott Medal for its shimmering and tingling watercolors. The images create a mood of the perpetual essence of nature, and our connections to one another through the blue-green and grey palettes used.

Children's books often contain more themes and important messages than 400 page novels. The Little Island is one of the great masterpieces in achieving that remarkable accomplishment.

The book covers the four seasons as they affect the little island and the plants and animals that visit the island. To show the on-going nature of the process, the book's time line expands beyond a single year.

The island is described as being:

"A part of the world

and a world of its own

all surrounded by the bright blue sea."

On the island, you will connect with birds, tides, clouds, fish, fogs, spiders, flowers, lobsters, seals, kingfishers, gulls, wild strawberries, butterflies, herring, mackerel, seaweed, pears, a black crow, a little kitten on a boat, trees, bushes, rocks, moths, an owl, a storm, snow, the sun, wind, and rain.

The connection to Donne is made in the context of the kitten visitor to the island. "May be I am an island too . . . a little fur Island in the air."

The connections run in all directions. The kitten learns from the island that the island is connected to all of the other land. When the kitten doubts the island about this point, the island suggests asking a fish.... The kitten gets the answer there, but cannot get firm proof. He just has to take the fish's word for it. This is an obvious allusion to the element of faith in our understanding of the spiritual nature of our connections to one another. Having the kitten fish is also an allusion to the famous Biblical reference of teaching a man to fish, rather than providing him with fish.

The book uses other connections to make the point. Many animals need the little island to go through their annual cycle, such as the seals who raise their young on the island. Many of the insects and birds come from the mainland across the sea. The weather affects the sea, the island, and the mainland alike . . . as do the tides.

Some of the illustrations are so beautiful that you will want to carry them with you always. My favorite was of the kingfishers.

The story will be strengthened by what you choose to share with you child as you read the book out loud. There are opportunities here to share scientific facts, spiritual connections, and to explain the mutual dependency that occurs in nature.

I suspect that many people's lives have been enriched by the warm connections this book makes. Shouldn't your children and grandchildren have the same opportunity?

See the forest and the trees! Read more ›

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars ADD is a good description June 11, 2011

By Will Riddle TOP 1000 REVIEWER

Format:Paperback

I usually love books like this, so I am sorry to have it give it only three stars. I agree with the other reviewer who said it had an ADD-like quality. It does, which is a shame because it could be rewritten to be a perfect story.

The main problem of the book is that you spend the first half of the book thinking that it will be about the island changing with the seasons. It is very similar to "The Little House" by Virginia Lee Burton. It is very poetic and descriptive of different animals and plants that change with the seasons.

Then all of a sudden a nonsensical tale about a kitten coming on a boat takes over. There are people with the kitten but we never hear about them. Then the kitten exchanges a couple lines with the island which don't really make sense. ("Maybe I am a little island too, said the kitten"). I was sort of ok with the change in theme until the part where the kitten flies high into the air and looks down on the island from the sky... totally random, has no real purpose. He's down the next moment and the abstruse dialogue between the kitten and island continues about the kitten's feet and whether the island is part of the world or not. It doesn't make any sense for about 5 pages until finally the concluding scientific point is made that the island is actually surrounded by ocean, so from a fish's point of view, it is indeed "connected" to the world around it. In other words, water unites all the world together.

I read the reviewer who connected it to John Donne, and while it's a neat connection in retrospect, you're not guided to this connection in the text. The secret that we're all connected to the big world somehow is Donne-like. But the kitten doesn't talk about his relationships or loneliness or anything.... You'd have to read a lot into the text in order to see this.

My kids were a little creeped out by the illustrations of the kitten too. He's not cute and he has huge spooky turquoise eyes, threatening to eat the fish up if they don't tell him the secret of the island.

That said, there is a wonderful point about faith made by the kitten, which makes the book worth reading. Kids who love the idea of secrets, faith, mysteries, and trusting people about things they don't know will like this part a lot. Again, I really don't think they're going to get the existential part, though, about us all being connected. I think they're barely able to understand the factual point that an island is connected to the world because it is surrounded by water that touches other lands.

What's weirder is, after the kitten part is over, the author goes back to a scientific description of the island again, about seasons and nightlife. It's kind of strange. It makes a nice bookend to the beginning, but it makes the interlude about the kitten seem even more non-sequitor. Maybe the author thought the technique was just interesting writing, but if it was sort of hard to follow as an adult, I am not sure what my children made of it.

Overall the book has a childlike feel, and sort of a haunting quality about it. One reviewer described it as "zen" and that might be true... or "mystical." It is probably worth renting from the library before purchasing to see if it's your thing. The story SEEMS as though it is a perfect fit with Margaret Wise Brown or Virginia Lee Burton, but in the end it disappoints. As much as I wanted to love it, it was just too strange. Read more ›

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Uncommon subject with gorgeous illustrations! July 4, 2006

By Sydelle Jones

Format:Hardcover

When I first bought the book, my 20 month old son was not interested! He didn't get the idea of an island. I loved the little story, so I persisted in reading it to him. When the winds blew on the island, I blew in his face. When the spiders spun their webs, I gave him little spider bites. When it showed the "tickly smelling pear tree" I tickled him. When the lobsters came, so did my claws! We barked like seals when they came to the island, and we fed each other strawberries fresh off the page when spring came! When the seagull lay her eggs, I dared him to try to get them and then I protected them as if I was the mama seagull. Of course, he knows them as the "my, my" birds. The fish jumped, the crow cawed, the cat came and so did the storms. The louder I boomed like thunder and splatted like lightening, the more my little boy loved it!! This treasure of a book is more suitable for older children who can digest the moral of this story, but my 20 month old son now loves it too, thanks to a little physical interaction while reading it! Might I say, Ms. Brown's prose is beautifully descriptive as well as the illustrations!

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars In a subtle way, the best children's book I've ever read. July 24, 1998

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

"The Little Island" must have been around for 50 years now. It's a powerful allegory for the connectedness of all things, with a wonderful, lyrical saturation of the text with imagery from nature. The illustrations emphasize the innocence of the message and the main characters, which are a cat and a fish. It's a book about knowing ("the cat's eyes were alive with the knowledge of it") and the impossibility of knowing directly ("answer me this or I'll eat you up," says the cat) the answers to the most important questions. This is a perspective changing book -- it changed mine at age 6.