Book Review: The Island: Book 1

Have you ever thought about how hard surviving on an deserted island would be? Well for a group of kids, this became a reality. Gordan Korman's The Island quickly captured my interest.

The theme of this book is to appreciate things in life before you lose them and to ignore small differences with people to accomplish goals. The kids started out as spoiled, fighting kids sent on a boat to learn to act better because the parents could not handle them themselves. Once washed up on the island, they were happy to see each other. They had to ignore the fact that they don't get along to acquire basic home essentials of survival such as shelter, food, and water.

The author's style of writing was simple as far as wording. This made reading the book very easy and enjoyable. When I read a book, I'm not trying to do more work to figure out words and sentence meanings, I just want something I can enjoy. This style also seems to go with the fact that the castaways are only kids, so this style gives further accentuates this feel.

The characters in this book are easy to understand and all seem to fit into standard cliches. There is the good kid, the rebel, the fighting siblings, the rich snob, and the brain. These main characters even further elaborate on the theme by showing how even though they are all different, they still work together. Because these are your typical characters, they are very predictable and not too deep, but that is okay because this book is more about the physical occurrences and action than the characters themselves.

The setting of The Island is the most important element of the book. Without this story taking place on an island, the book could not even happen and none of the events that took place could have happened. The setting scares the characters because it is disconnected from the outside world. Being on the island also is what causes a kid to get shot, a kid to be chased by a wild boar, the kids to have to look for food and most importantly, the setting causes the kids to find an old atomic bomb buried at a deserted military base on the island. This discovery is what conveys the story into book two. Essentially, if this was taken place elsewhere, the sequel would not exist.

This book reminds me of other survivor books I have read, also, about "Man Vs. Wild" and "Survivor Man" on discovery channel because they have to survive on an island too. This book does not make any personal connections with me except for that I think it would be cool to be stranded on an island for a couple of days, just to see if I could.

I would recommend this book to anyone who likes action in stories instead of minor drama. Adults might be bored by this book due to the simplicity of the wording, but if they want a good story that is easy to read, I would recommend this to them as well.