Based on a true story, Island of the Blue Dolphins is about a native girl who must fend for herself after she’s left behind on her isolated island in the Pacific. This bestselling novel by O’Dell won the Newbery award and is his most famous work, but students might also know some of his other works of historical fiction, including Zia, a companion novel to Island of the Blue Dolphins, and Sing Down the Moon, about a young Navajo girl forced from her home in Arizona.
Students might also have read other survival stories, including Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George about an Eskimo girl lost on the tundra, and Hatchet by Gary Paulsen about a boy who must survive alone in the...
