Estimated Reading Time 2 Minutes
Publisher: Yearling; 1st edition (May 28, 2002)
Paperback : 160 pages
ISBN: 978-0440416630
Thoughts: I have loved this story since childhood and have come back to it many times over the years. It’s a beautiful story of friendship and courage between a young white boy and an elderly black man. With all of the division in the world, this book is a reminder that we are all connected and that friendship is not only available to us if we are open to it, but that we need each other to survive.
Favorite Quote: Something happened to me that day on the cay. I’m not quite sure what it was even now, but I had begun to change.
I said to Timothy, “I want to be your friend.”
He said softly, “Young bahss, you’ave always been my friend.”
First sentence: Like silent, hungry sharks that swim in the darkness of the sea, the German submarines arrived in the middle of the night.
Summary from Amazon.com:
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
