La leí pensando que era un libro de robinsones (y no quisiera dejarme ninguno por leer, es una forma de filosofía que me obsesiona). Sin embargo, es más un libro de aventuras, aventuras de evangelización, para ser más exactos, lo que no es de extrañar, pues está escrito 1857. No obstante, aunque la parte de lucha con los salvajes y su posterior conversión (sin que se dé la más mínima mezcla espúrea con ellos, faltaría más) me ha aburrido bastante, la parte robinsoniana me ha gustado, los personajes están muy bien dibujados y me ha resultado, como mínimo interesante.

Written 100 years before The Lord of the Flies, The Coral Island couldn't be more different than its literary descendant. I don't really know how to rate this 'classic' children's book (given its built-in racism, pro-colonialism, and missionizing agenda) but it certainly deepens my appreciation of Golding's masterpiece.

It's necessary to remember this book was published in 1858: _24 years before_ "Treasure Island." Public executions were still carried out in England and slavery was still legal in the US. Calling out issues of racism and imperialism here are a factor of presentism in the mind of the reader, even if the cannibalism and missionary zeal are exaggerated for dramatic effect. So, then.

So much of Ballantyne's narrative concerns the three central characters' observations, rationalizations, and accommodations of their new surroundings and circumstances that I could not help but make an intuitive leap; this book is not only the first major "boy's adventure" for Victorian literature, but is THE archetype of YA SFF published today. The bulk of this book reads like a standard YA portal fantasy or SF crashlanded-on-a-strange-planet novel the likes of which Andre Norton or (gasp) Robert Heinlein might have written, only in decidedly florid nineteenth-century prose. It's worth reading if only to see that, but then the 3 teens are likeable, the story breezy and exciting, and it's really neat to see how Pacific Islands were such an alien world to English readers at the time that such details were dazzling.

On the downside, there is a projected optimism that strains belief: things work out too well too often. I can see how & why Golding spun this same story into "The Lord of the Flies" a century later (whoopee, Cold War cynicism). Also, the Christian proselytizing is too thick in the last act to be carried by the narrative, and the narrative itself fizzles at the end rather than arrives anywhere. I wonder if he anticipated writing a sequel? ( )

Very early teen adventure book. Three boys are ship wrecked on a desert island. Its not bad but probably doesn't stand up well to more modern books of its kind. ( )

Fifteen-year-old Ralph, mischievous young Peterkin and clever, brave Jack are shipwrecked on a coral reef with only a telescope and a broken penknife between them. At first the island seems a paradise, with its foods and wealth of natural wonders. But then a party of cannibals arrives, and after that a pirate ship...