The Little Island (Dell Picture Yearling)

Rating:
Summary: Fabulous! An A+ First Quality Book!!!
Review: Even if this book had no words, I would still love it, because the illustrations are that brilliant!!~~
The wording is quite clever.
This story tells about a little island, and the changing seasons it lives through.
This island is home to many creatures, and serves many, many purposes.
Lobsters crawl underneath the island to find dark hiding places.
Seals come to have and raise babies.
Birds come to build nests and lay eggs.
In spring, flowers bloom on this little island. In summer, strawberries ripen.
One day, a family on a boat stops at the island for an afternoon picnic. With them, there is a black kitty.
The kitty observes:
"My what a small island. You are as small as big is big."
The island converses with this kitty, and teaches him that everything is a wonderful part of this world, and equally unique and important.
The kitty learns a secret from a fish- 'All land is one land under the sea'.
In autumn, the pears ripen on the lone pear tree on the island, and finally winter comes with snow.
It was good to be a little island. A part of the world, and a world of its own.

Rating:
Summary: The weather started getting rough....
Review: Published just after the end of World War II, "The Little Island" garnered itself a prestigious Caldecott medal for exemplary plot and illustrations in a picture book. Looking at it today, I'm a little surprised. The book does have a sweet little story. Describing the daily events that occur on a small island in the beautiful blue ocean, the story eventually focuses its attention on a black kitten that visits the island for a while. The kitten explores and speaks with the island and its fish, discovering the nature of, "how all land is one land under the sea". In the end, the kitten leaves and the island is subject to the wild storms and animals that seek its shores.

I like the story of the kitten and I like the words Golden MacDonald has chosen to convey nature's mysteries. "The cat's eyes were shining with the secret of it. And because he loved secrets he believed. And he let the fish go". So no quarrel here with the text. Top notch. Two thumbs up. It's the illustrations I have a bone to pick with.

When you think of the fine illustrators of the past, geniuses like Robert McCloskey or James Thurber come to mind. Less likely to appear in one's brain is a Mr. Leonard Weisgard. In creating this book, Weisgard begins strongly. The opening pages reveal a black and white kingfisher smiling benignly at the viewer. The little island, obviously somewhat close to North American shores due to its pine trees and native plants, is rendered lovingly in the first few spreads. But then the descriptions increase and the pictures do not compliment the words. We are told that, "Small flowers, white and blue and violets with golden eyes and little waxy white-pink chuckleberry blossoms and one tickly smelling pear tree bloomed on the Island". Great. Now where are they? Because in the picture facing these descriptions we see one tree with white yellow blossoms (not white-pink), some small flowers that are white, blue, red, and violet (but NOT violet with golden eyes), and not a pear tree anywhere in sight. Hm. Eventually we come to a picture of two kingfishers preparing, supposedly, to build nests. This may have been the illustrator's intent, and perhaps I have a dirty mind, but I have never seen a clearer picture of a male kingfisher mounting a female kingfisher atop a dead tree. So there's bird sex to contend with as well. Not the illlustrator's purpose, but an undeniable image. oog.

Finally, we get to the little kitten and all attempts at composition and proportion go flying out the window, never to return. The kitten is, from the first shot, about half the size of its humans. Then it leaps into the air and appears to be flying over the island. Next, it catches a fish, its legs having shrunk into its body so that it now looks to be one of those cats bred to have purposefully short legs. In the end, the cat leaves (thank goodness) and we return to some interesting illustrations that bear little or no resemblance to the text that author Golden MacDonald took such pains to write.

There's great danger in critiquing books of a certain age. People who grew up loving "The Little Island" will not want this book to be so poorly reviewed. But if you pull away the sentiment and look at this story with cool clear eyes you will see that it is the unfortunate pairing of an excellent author with an inferior illustrator. It is an interesting book, there is no question. But today it cannot be considered anything but a sub-par Caldecott finalist.

Rating:
Summary: The weather started getting rough....
Review: Published just after the end of World War II, "The Little Island" garnered itself a prestigious Caldecott medal for exemplary plot and illustrations in a picture book. Looking at it today, I'm a little surprised. The book does have a sweet little story. Describing the daily events that occur on a small island in the beautiful blue ocean, the story eventually focuses its attention on a black kitten that visits the island for a while. The kitten explores and speaks with the island and its fish, discovering the nature of, "how all land is one land under the sea". In the end, the kitten leaves and the island is subject to the wild storms and animals that seek its shores.

I like the story of the kitten and I like the words Golden MacDonald has chosen to convey nature's mysteries. "The cat's eyes were shining with the secret of it. And because he loved secrets he believed. And he let the fish go". So no quarrel here with the text. Top notch. Two thumbs up. It's the illustrations I have a bone to pick with.

When you think of the fine illustrators of the past, geniuses like Robert McCloskey or James Thurber come to mind. Less likely to appear in one's brain is a Mr. Leonard Weisgard. In creating this book, Weisgard begins strongly. The opening pages reveal a black and white kingfisher smiling benignly at the viewer. The little island, obviously somewhat close to North American shores due to its pine trees and native plants, is rendered lovingly in the first few spreads. But then the descriptions increase and the pictures do not compliment the words. We are told that, "Small flowers, white and blue and violets with golden eyes and little waxy white-pink chuckleberry blossoms and one tickly smelling pear tree bloomed on the Island". Great. Now where are they? Because in the picture facing these descriptions we see one tree with white yellow blossoms (not white-pink), some small flowers that are white, blue, red, and violet (but NOT violet with golden eyes), and not a pear tree anywhere in sight. Hm. Eventually we come to a picture of two kingfishers preparing, supposedly, to build nests. This may have been the illustrator's intent, and perhaps I have a dirty mind, but I have never seen a clearer picture of a male kingfisher mounting a female kingfisher atop a dead tree. So there's bird sex to contend with as well. Not the illlustrator's purpose, but an undeniable image. oog.

Finally, we get to the little kitten and all attempts at composition and proportion go flying out the window, never to return. The kitten is, from the first shot, about half the size of its humans. Then it leaps into the air and appears to be flying over the island. Next, it catches a fish, its legs having shrunk into its body so that it now looks to be one of those cats bred to have purposefully short legs. In the end, the cat leaves (thank goodness) and we return to some interesting illustrations that bear little or no resemblance to the text that author Golden MacDonald took such pains to write.

There's great danger in critiquing books of a certain age. People who grew up loving "The Little Island" will not want this book to be so poorly reviewed. But if you pull away the sentiment and look at this story with cool clear eyes you will see that it is the unfortunate pairing of an excellent author with an inferior illustrator. It is an interesting book, there is no question. But today it cannot be considered anything but a sub-par Caldecott finalist.

Rating:
Summary: An Old Fashioned Story
Review: The Little Island by Golden MacDonald and Leonard Weisgard is a simple fantasy fiction story about a small quiet island. In it we learn about all the creatures that call the island home. In a relaxing way the book also moves through days and seasons. The old fashioned illustrations make the reader think of pictures in their mind. This book would be great for first and second graders who love nature.

Rating:
Summary: A mystical gem -- the best
Review: well, i'll find Donald Wayne Mitchell ("Top 10 Reviewer", above) a hard act to follow, or easy, if i simply say, "yeah, what he said." i have a copy of this book. i don't plan to give it away, at least not right now, i just have it. i just like to pick it up at times and look at some of the pictures, and read some of the words: "...And the fish told the kitten how all land is one land under the sea. The cat's eyes were shining with the secret of it. And because he loved secrets he believed. And he let the fish go." yes, as my contemporary points out, this book does work at more than one level, and masterfully so. for no more than this book costs, there is no reason not to get it. it is a jewel.

Rating:
Summary: A Children's Version of "No Man Is An Island" by John Donne
Review: 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!