I’ve read a handful of reviews of this book on goodreads and there are many that are dismissive of this book because it has a main character with colonial values during colonial times. That some of the newer generations can’t judge a book by the time period it was written is disheartening. Our copy comes from an old mini library set of children’s books, a lot of the reviews seemed to also be judging this book as high literature, which it is not.
I read this to my 8 year old and it kept him engaged the whole time. I’ll never forget, near the end of the book, when he is stranded on the island, how his eyes would go wide every time it was mentioned how many years he was now stranded on the island. 3 years! 5 years! 7 years! He was captivated. What also captured his interest was the concept of cannibals.
The book does use the word negro in it, which is not a word that I was ready to introduce my son to yet. I changed the reading slightly so as to not use the word. I did not change the use of the word “savage”, which is used often but I did explain the historical attitudes and context on that one. A couple of days after explaining the historical context of the word “savage”, my son asked me to use the word “bokoblins” instead of “savage”. Bokoblins are goblin like creatures from the Zelda game. He is quite empathetic by nature and our public school system does a good job of humanizing and celebrating diversity. He understood that the attitude was no longer acceptable and found a way to make it more palatable.
My reason for reading him an old book was not to expose him to outdated words, but to expose him to the style of old writing. The sentence structure is very elequent, more poetic than modern prose, as it can be in older books.