In this conversational interview, a child named Alana recounts the plot of Scott O'Dell’s novel Island of the Blue Dolphins, describing key events such as the Aleut raid, the departure of the tribe, Karana’s brother Ramo’s missed ship, her survival on the island, the creation of tools, encounters with a "devilfish," and her relationships with animal companions like Rontu. Alana emphasizes that she does not find the sad moments particularly upsetting, focusing instead on the adventure and survival skills she admires. The adult interlocutor (Speaker B) probes Alana’s feelings about the story, its suitability for other children, and how authors might capture a character’s inner thoughts. Alana shares her own creative concept for a new book about children surviving alone on the other side of the galaxy or the world, highlighting themes of conflict, forced cooperation, and companionship with animals. She rates Island of the Blue Dolphins extremely highly ("10 million") and expresses enthusiasm for future writing. The dialogue touches on assessing age-appropriateness of mature content, the role of personal experience in empathy, and the process of imagining characters’ emotions.
Chapters
My best, my worst.
Ah! Hello, Ilana. Is that Logan talking?
Yep.
Hey, Logan. Hi, Ryan. So I understand that you finished Island of the Blue Dolphins?
Yes.
Tell me about it.
Okay, so it's about this girl named Karana, but like her secret— like, that's her real name, but her secret name, because every single person in the tribe, for some reason, I don't really know why, um, has these secret names which are their real names, but they have fake names to call by. So I think—
is that the whole story?
I think hers is Monapali.
Is that the whole story?
What did you say?
Is that the whole story?
Nope.
So tell me more. Tell me what happens in the story.
Okay, so these Russians, I think it's called the Aleuts or Aleutes, I don't really know how to pronounce it, come to hunt otter, the wild sea otter. And then they are going to split it in half for some of the goods, like canoes and stuff that the tribe has. But for some reason, when they're about to leave, the Russians, not in war, just like in battle, like they start fighting most of the men. They killed all the island's men, I think, and then they left. And then weeks after that, another white man ship came. And then they came to take all the people of the tribe to another country. And don't get me wrong, like they weren't sad that they were leaving. They were excited. They were packing their bags currently because they really wanted to go. And then Karana's brother Ramo went because he was like one of the first people on the boat. But he realized that he forgot his fishing spear in the hut, so he went to go get it, but the ship already left, like, way before he came back. So Karana wants to go and, like, wait for him, but the chief, the new chief, he said, no, stay here. The ship will come back another day for him. But she then, um, it's her brother, so she actually jumps off of the boat back to the island. Um, but the ship is already long gone before she can like rise up. So, um, she has to drop the basket with all our things, things. Um, and then she actually has to swim back to the island. Um, where she finds, um, her brother like staring out on the sea. Um, and she says, "Will it ever come back?" He said— she said, "Maybe." But then he said, um, like, "I don't want it to come back. I like it here with you. It's funner than when the other people were here." So, uh, then Ramo gets killed by a bunch of wild dogs. So Karana has to like make her own tent and stuff. So she gets like a piece of wood, like a pole, and she gets some leftover skins from some of the other huts. And then some like ribs. And then like she finds like a dead whale that's lying on the beach. And I think it's all dissolved except for the bones. So she takes some of the ribs, or all of them, I don't really know, and she makes it like her fence. And then, like, she has to hunt for her own, so she makes some weapons like spears and bows and arrows. And she tries to spear something called the devil fish. It's like big, and if it like if it sticks onto you, because it's kind of like an octopus, I think, because like it has like these tentacles that have like really, really sticky suckers on them. So if it grabs onto you, it'll hold on until— it'll hold on and never let go until it wants to let go. And if like— and if like it's— and if it's trying to get spirit, it's like just like I'm a squid or an octopus, spews some black ink and swims away.
Is that most of the book?
Yeah.
So is that how the book ends? Is the kind of squid octopus thing swims away?
Nope.
How does it end?
So it ends kind of like by telling how beautiful it is, especially like in the summer and the winter and spring and all the seasons. And this, the Aleuts came to like hunt otter again for some reason, but they brought like this woman and Karana doesn't know, and Karana doesn't know why they even brought like a woman like for hunting. And she doesn't know the purpose. So, but that girl one day visits her cave or wherever she's in. Um, because that's like where she stores food and stuff. Um, and she just says hi, and she said pretty in her language, or wait, yeah, in Quran's language. They start talking in, in a different language. Um, and then it's like they're becoming best friends, like they talk together, they laugh together. And then the girl made like a shell or rock necklace for Karana, but while Karana was making like some earrings to go with it, like the girl didn't come back. So she— Karana waited and waited and waited, but she never came back. And it just tells at the end like how beautiful it was and like how— well, not like how she grew up, but how she was doing and like what she did and how she made things. Well, not how she made things, but, um, I liked it.
You did? I would think in some ways it sounds like there are a lot of sad things that happen in there. You're okay with the sad things happening?
Yeah, and to me they weren't really sad.
Okay, so why did you like the book? What made you like it?
There's a lot of adventure, like Maybe you could, how many bows and arrows maybe. Or you could maybe tell another person, oh, I just read Island of the Blue Dolphins and I learned what a devilfish is. Or like maybe I learned how to maybe make a bow and arrow. Or like, or maybe like there's a lot of adventure, like she has to grow up. Well, not grow up. She's already either like 24 or something like that because I kind of did the math because it said that her brother is only half her, um, age, which is 12. Um, so with 12 and 12 is 24. So like, I really like it. Like, there's a lot of adventure. Like, she has to do things on her own.
So remember a few weeks ago we talked about kind of survival and could you survive in the wilderness, and that's when I recommended this book. So it sounds like you still like the idea of having to or learning how to survive in the wilderness. Is that true?
Yes, I'm actually thinking of a book that I can make.
Okay, that you would write?
Yeah.
So tell me about the book that you would write.
Um, I don't really know what it's gonna call, what I'm gonna call it, but this is just an idea. Either maybe On the Other Side of the galaxy or on the other side of the world.
And somebody's going to survive alone on the other side of the galaxy or the other side of the world?
Yeah, some kids, um, like it's like either a gang or like they don't like each other like on like where they are, but then they have— they actually have to be friends so they could like work together and stuff.
Oh, that sounds like a very fascinating story, so I definitely want to read that when you get it written. Going back to Karuna, do you think that she was lonely?
I don't really think so, and I think I forgot to tell you this part, but like when she went to like get revenge on the wild dogs for her brother, she actually got one as a pet. She named it Rontu, which in her language means fox eyes. And she wasn't really alone because that dog kept her company, and I think she liked that.
So you think that if you had a dog, that would be enough to keep you company?
Yeah, like maybe you could play with it or like, you know.
So do you think that sometimes it was hard for her to do those things, or is it okay to do hard— for there to be life challenges?
I would say some of those things would be kind of hard because like, but like she also got like things lucky. Like it said in the book, her bow and arrow, she could actually shoot farther and more straight.
So do you, do you think that you would like to live, have all those challenges, that if you had to survive in the wilderness that you think you would somehow appreciate having to hunt and fish on your own without like grocery store food?
Yeah, because then it would challenge me, like maybe I would learn new things, like maybe how to do this or that.
And you don't think it would ever be just too hard and you'd want to, you wish you could just have a kitchen meal and all that?
No, like, like she has to hunt like her food, like the devilfish and like abalone. It's like this dried either like kind of like mussel or, or fish. But she has to hunt on her own. So she didn't have a bunch of food stuff, like they have to hunt. And she makes friends with all the animals, not all of them, some of them. She sometimes keeps pets as birds sometimes too. Oh, here's another sad part. Rontu dies. I forget how. I think Rontu dies by some, I guess, bulls or something like that.
Wow.
But she goes to the wild dog cave again. And somehow she finds this dog that looks exactly like Rontu, so she's guessing that it's his son.
Mm-hmm.
She keeps him, and I forget what he calls him.
So she raises him up and tames him, and that becomes her new dog?
Yeah.
Okay, so some people think that, you know, things like all of the, all of the men being killed on the island, there's is pretty horrible. Some people think that kids shouldn't read things with lots of bad stuff. Do you think that maybe some kids shouldn't read things with bad stuff happening, or do you think it's okay for kids to read stuff with bad stuff happening?
Like, if they could handle it, they could probably read it. Like, if they could handle it, like maybe they've done it before. I think some of my friends, I know could probably handle it.
And how do we— how can we grown-ups figure out if a kid can handle it? How do we know?
Maybe if they've experienced bad stuff, like maybe one of their family members died or something like that, or maybe if they've read like stuff about that or like sad things, like adventure things, like all like mixed together, like Island of the Blue Dolphins. Like maybe they've read something like that. They could probably handle it.
Okay, and then, you know, this was based on a true story.
Really?
Yeah. Oh, wow. Yeah, isn't that incredible? It's really incredible. Yeah, it's— she was— the island she was on, it was off the southern coast of California. I think it's closer to LA than San Diego. I think it's called Santa Catalina Island. But if you look on a map, you can see it. And yeah, I think, you know, obviously we don't have a lot of details. So the woman who wrote it, do you remember the author's name of the book? Maybe it's a man. Is it Scott O'Dell? Somebody O'Dell?
Yeah, Scott O'Dell or something like that.
Okay, yeah, he obviously didn't know what was going through her mind and what she was doing day to day, but we know the basic facts, and the basic facts are very similar to what is reported there. So if you were writing a story like that, how would you get inside Karuna's mind? Because the book kind of talks about what she was thinking and feeling, doesn't it?
Yeah.
So how do you as an author get inside somebody's mind? How do you know what somebody's thinking?
Maybe you could tell by their emotion, like what they express, maybe.
But, you know, this happened maybe 100 years ago or a little bit more, and then you don't, you know, we don't have like a camera from back then showing how she was feeling. So, you know, when you're writing about characters, if you write your story about these kids on the other side of the world, how are you going to figure out what should be in their minds?
Maybe like if something showed up unexpected and they were taken to this other island, maybe they could be surprised or scared, kind of. What if we die? What if someone— what if something happens? Wild animal? Like maybe a wild bull or something attacks them, lions, anything like that. Maybe they could be scared. Like they don't know what the island has to offer.
So do you sort of imagine how you or your friends might feel in a similar situation? And that's how you write, you as the author would write what's going on in their heads?
Yeah, like I would be kind of surprised, but also kind of scared because I don't know what the dangers are there. I like this one.
Yeah, well, I think it's— your dad showed me a short story that you wrote which was fabulous. Congratulations, and I very much look forward to this other story you're going to write. Island of Blue Dolphins was one of those books that I loved when I was a kid, and so from time to time as I think of books that I love, I'll recommend them, and we'll see if you like them as well as I do. Sounds like you like this one pretty well.
Oh yeah.
On a scale of 0 to 10, with 10 being absolutely fantastic, 5 being so-so, 0 being terrible, how would you rate Island of Blue Dolphins?
10 million.
Whoa, that's pretty good. All right, in which case I'm gonna wish you a good day and maybe we'll talk next week, okay?
