LoveReading4Kids Says
Beautifully written, this novel won every award imaginable in the USA when it was published. It is a tense, dramatic and compulsive survival adventure that rivals Robinson Crusoe. This though also touches heavily on prejudice and how the young white boy, reliant for his survival on an elderly black man following a shipwreck, begins to trust someone who through his upbringing by his mother had instilled on him not to trust. The boy discovers a true friend, overcomes his prejudices of ageism and racism, this is their story and is a truly inspiring read and as relevant to read now as it was when it was first published.
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Puffin Fact! The Cay is based on a true story. While researching another book, Theodore read about an incident that happened in 1942. The Germans had torpedoed a Dutch ship, slicing it in half. Those who survived the attack crawled into a lifeboat, looked back and saw an eleven-year-old Dutch boy. Download more Puffin Facts here!
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The Cay Synopsis
For fans of Hatchet and Island of the Blue Dolphins comes Theodore Taylor's classic bestseller and Lewis Carroll Shelf Award winner, The Cay.
Phillip is excited when the Germans invade the small island of Curaçao. War has always been a game to him, and he's eager to glimpse it firsthand-until the freighter he and his mother are traveling to the United States on is torpedoed.
When Phillip comes to, he is on a small raft in the middle of the sea. Besides Stew Cat, his only companion is an old West Indian, Timothy. Phillip remembers his mother's warning about black people: "They are different, and they live differently."
But by the time the castaways arrive on a small island, Phillip's head injury has made him blind and dependent on Timothy.
"Mr. Taylor has provided an exciting story…The idea that all humanity would benefit from this special form of color blindness permeates the whole book…The result is a story with a high ethical purpose but no sermon."-New York Times Book Review
"A taut tightly compressed story of endurance and revelation…At once barbed and tender, tense and fragile-as Timothy would say, 'outrageous good.'"-Kirkus Reviews
* "Fully realized setting…artful, unobtrusive use of dialect…the representation of a hauntingly deep love, the poignancy of which is rarely achieved in children's literature."-School Library Journal, Starred
"Starkly dramatic, believable and compelling."-Saturday Review
"A tense and moving experience in reading."-Publishers Weekly
"Eloquently underscores the intrinsic brotherhood of man."-Booklist
"This is one of the best survival stories since Robinson Crusoe."-The Washington Star
· A New York Times Best Book of the Year
· A School Library Journal Best Book of the Year
· A Horn Book Honor Book
· An American Library Association Notable Book
· A Publishers Weekly Children's Book to Remember
· A Child Study Association's Pick of Children's Books of the Year
· Jane Addams Book Award
· Lewis Carroll Shelf Award
· Commonwealth Club of California: Literature Award
· Southern California Council on Literature for Children and Young People Award
· Woodward School Annual Book Award
· Friends of the Library Award, University of California at Irvine
About This Edition
| ISBN: |
9780440229124 |
| Publication date: |
8th April 2003 |
| Author: |
Theodore Taylor |
| Illustrator: |
Kenny McKendry |
| Publisher: |
Laurel Leaf an imprint of Random House Children's Books |
| Format: |
Paperback |
| Pagination: |
160 pages |
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About Theodore Taylor
Taylor was born in North Carolina He began writing at the age of thirteen, covering high school sports events for the Portsmouth, Virginia, Evening Star. Leaving home at seventeen to join the Washington, D.C. Daily Newsas a copyboy, he discovered the highly educational aspects of living on $11 a week.
During World War II, he first served as a cadet-AB seaman on a gasoline tanker, first of four merchant ships; then became a naval officer in the Pacific Theatre. He was recalled to active duty a few months after the Korean War began.
In 1955, a year after his first book, The Magnificent Mitscher, Taylor joined Paramount Pictures as a press agent; then became a story editor, finally, associate producer. "
The Cay, winner of 11 literary awards, including the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award, "...of which I’m the proudest, since the book was deemed worthy of being on a shelf with Alice In Wonderland...", was a Universal film presentation starring James Earl Jones. Now in print in 14 foreign countries, the story of young "Phe-leep" and old "Timothy" has passed 4,000,000 copies in publication, worldwide.
The Maldonado Miracle and The Teetoncey Trilogy, chronicling the remote, quaint Outer Banks of North Carolina, quickly followed the success of The Cay. Among his titles are Sniper, Maria, The Hostage, The Weirdo, winner of the 1992 Edgar Allen Poe Award; Sweet Friday Island, another suspense story.
In autumn, 1993, Timothy Of The Cay, prequel-sequel to the original tale of survival and prejudice was published by Harcourt Brace. The 24-year gap between the novels was caused by Taylor’s reluctance to attempt "topping himself."
In 1946, Taylor participated in Operations Crossroads, the testing of two atomic bombs at Bikini Atoll, in the Western Pacific. Out of that experience came The Bomb, story of the world’s first nuclear nomads, published autumn, 1995. The Bomb won the 1996 Scott O’Dell Award for historical fiction.
Rogue Wave and Other Red-Blooded Sea Stories followed The Bomb. The Flight of Jesse Leroy Brown, the story of the Navy’s first Afro-American carrier pilot was published in autumn, 1998.
His short stories and novelettes have appeared in Redbook, McCall’s, Ladies Home Journal, Saturday Evening Post, Argosy, Alfred Hitchcock’s Magazine and others.
Theodore Taylor passed away on October 26, 2006.
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