About the Author:
Theodore Taylor was born in North Carolina and began writing at the age of thirteen as a cub reporter for the Portsmouth, Virginia Evening Star. Leaving home at seventeen to join the Washington Daily News as a copy boy, he worked his way toward New York City and became an NBC network sportswriter at the age of nineteen. Mr. Taylor is the author of a dozen books for young readers, among them the award-winning The Cay. He lives in Laguna Beach, California, with his wife, Flora.
From School Library Journal:
Grade 5-8-Twenty-four years after publication of The Cay (Doubleday, 1987, 1969), Taylor returns to his story of a young white boy stranded on a Caribbean island with an elderly, resourceful black man. The narrative alternates between Phillip's first-person accounts of what happened to him after his rescue, and flashbacks in the third person telling Timothy's story, starting with his childhood in St. Thomas. In The Cay, readers learned how Phillip came to be on the torpedoed ship Hato; this prequel/sequel adds depth to Timothy's character through its treatment of episodes that led up to that event. The boy's story is less revealing than the man's, and some of it has already been told and is slightly contradicted by dates in the final chapter of The Cay. Faithful in tone, dialect, and characterization to the earlier title, Timothy does not delve as deeply into the theme of the first book. Instead, while it touches on racial prejudice, its focus is more on Phillip's appreciation of his friend and guardian angel, and on the adventurous and touching yarns of the West Indian man's life at sea. Those who enjoyed the earlier book will feel as though they're meeting up with old acquaintances and learning more about them, and will see the story come full circle when Phillip returns-with his sight-to the island.
Susan Knorr, Milwaukee Public Library, WI
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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