A taut, tightly compressed story of endurance and revelation. When
American Philip, eleven, regains consciousness on a raft after his
ship is torpedoed (World War II), his only companion is an aged
Negro deck hand. "He was ugly. His nose was flat and his face was
broad; his head was a mass of wiry gray hair." Timothy's heavy West
Indian accent, laced with "young bahss," is alien and Phillip
understands his mother's saying that blacks are "different" -
smelly, superstitious, coarse-mannered. Then Phillip becomes blind
and Timothy, who's been tolerating the snotty kid, is in for more
affronts. Eventually they reach a tropical island ("Boddam, young
bahss") and Timothy begins Crusoe housekeeping with Phillip as
truculent roommate and reluctant helper. As Phillip loses his
timidity and starts to explore, he realizes how much Timothy has
adapted and arranged things to benefit him - vine ropes for guides,
a constant fire for signalling, rigging for fresh water. Almost
imperceptibly, he adjusts his stereotype of a black man to the
reality of Timothy until the memory of that ugly face is gone,
until with no longer grating ingenuousness he asks, "Timothy, are
you still black?" (Better still, Timothy roars with laughter.) And
then they face a storm and Timothy, in shielding Phillip, dies.
That the boy survives is a measure of Timothy's tremendous
foresight and Phillip's admirable reserves. At once barbed and
tender, tense and fragile - as Timothy would say, "outrageous
good." (Kirkus Reviews)
One of a series of top-quality fiction for schools, this adventure
with a double theme won eight major literary awards in the USA. It
is both a Robinson Crusoe-type shipwreck story and a study of the
changing relationship between a 12-year-old white boy and an
elderly black man.
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