The Island (thoughts on the book)

The Island by Gary Paulsen is a pretty neat little book. It's decently short (200 pages) and pretty easy Walden, if you replace Henry David Thoreau with a curious 15 year old who's not really sure why he isolates himself in nature. At first I really didn't care for the book's writing style, as there's a lot of dialogue that will make you roll your eyes, and the characters seemed like caricatures, but I let it slide considering how the book is basically intended for middle schoolers.
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The main problem I have with The Island is that although adults reading it will understand it's purpose, actual middle schoolers who read it will probably have a difficult time staying interested because of the uneventful narrative. Just speaking from personal experience, when I was in 7th grade, I'm sure I'd be wondering "what's the point of this book? He's just sitting on the island doing weird stuff." Of course now I understand what Wil was doing and can enjoy the book for what its trying to say, but The Island is just dreadfully uneventful. The "climax" of the story, when Wil gets in a fight with the town bully, feels kind of weird and unnecessary. Paulsen's only explanation for it is that "Ray's the town bully, and the town bully starts fights cause that's what town bullies do." A pretty unnatural conflict, in my opinion.

Besides the book's flaws, I did particularly enjoy reading it. I related to Wil quite bit because I did something kind of similar when I was about 14, except instead of an island I sat underneath some bleachers and read books. One thing The Island does pretty well is capture the confusing "I don't know why I'm doing this, but I feel like I should" feeling that so many people experience. Also, it makes it clear that there was nothing extraordinary about the island itself; instead, everything that Wil learned from the island came from inside himself.

In terms of climate change, The Island really doesn't have much to do with it in the usual sense. It's never alluded to that the weather is unnatural or that strange changes have been happening, no natural disaster strikes the town, etc. The main connection you could draw to climate change from this novel is that it portrays a young teenager's personal connection with his natural environment, from which you can start discussing how climate change might affect other people who have such experiences with camping in nature (e.g. the destruction of camping areas due to climate change, the ethics of changing something that is as naturally beautiful as nature itself, etc).