A review by 1969sl
The Coral Island by R.M. Ballantyne

5.0

A delightful Robinson Crusoe-like boys adventure, where author clearly relishes storytelling about faraway, exotic locations - not unlike Karl May who so thrillingly let his imagination roam trough the places he never actually visited in real life, Ballantyne lovingly describes isolated coral island that in some other hands could have been shipwrecking hell, but in this case he made it sound like a heaven. Its all about three boys who bond trough daily explorations of "their" island and in process learn how to swim, cook, dive and survive on their own. Its all very, very uplifting and not once these boys ever get depressed about missing their families and such, in fact, they seem to have been perfectly content being where they are, their only care being how to build a fire and what exotic fruit to eat.

Occasionally the book shows its age (with chapters devoted to description of plants, fruits, etc) but to my eyes this gives it even more of quaint charm and I have absolutely no problem with now-dated racial and moralistic aspects of it, since its obvious that Ballantyne lived in different time and he was not malicious person. Three boys are divided between various strengths - each of them have something to bring to the company and along the way they grew genuinely attached to each other. Perhaps the last few chapters were not really necessary (kind of stretch just to add some more action) but this didn't diminish my pleasure in reading something so inspiring and wonderful. Truly loved it.