Helpful Score: 1
Author of Sylvester and the Magic Pebble and the Dr. Desoto books, this is a chapter book about a mouse who gets swept away by a rainstorm and ends up on an 'island'. If you like Charlotte's Web you'll like this one!
Helpful Score: 1
I enjoyed this little book, but I am a middle aged grown up. I like William Steig's drawings and the story. However, I would be quite surprised if children enjoyed it. The main character is a bourgeois (mouse) person who is thrown into a wilderness situation and experiences the seasons outdoors.
Helpful Score: 1
A Newberry Honor book by the same author who wrote "Sylvester And The Magic Pebble", "Dr. DeSoto Goes To Africa", "The Talking Bone", and many other wonderful books! Find out what happend with Abel the mouse gets stranded on a river island.
Ages 8-12 or so.
Ages 8-12 or so.
Helpful Score: 1
From Amazon.com, reviewer Karin Snelson:
A Newbery Honor Book. One summer day, newlywed mice Abel and Amanda are out for a picnic in the woods when they are caught in a sudden storm--a "full-fledged, screaming hurricane" to be precise. As they take refuge in a cave, a wind scoops up Amanda's scarf, and Abel foolishly lunges from safety to retrieve it. So begins William Steig's Newbery Honor Book Abel's Island, the ensuing adventures of this rather foppish mouse as he comes head to head with nature. Amazingly, Abel is swept up in a stream, then a river, then eventually marooned on an island (about 12,000 tails long). He is sure that his rescue is imminent: "It's certainly gotten around that Abelard Hassam di Chirico Flint, of the Mossville Flints, is missing," the society mouse speculates. But he is not so lucky. What will this intelligent, imaginative rodent do to get off the island and back to his beloved Amanda? He busies himself with finding ways to get to shore (including bridges, boats, catapults, stepping stones, and gliders); figuring out what he should eat (everything from mulberries to roasted seeds); and investigating where he should take shelter (in a rotten log). As the weeks and months go by, he misses his books, his paintings, his comfortable stuffed chair, his stylish clothes (now damp, torn, and lumpy), but above all his precious wife Amanda, whom he thinks about constantly. As the mouse faces his new life Robinson Crusoe-style, Abel discovers what it's like to be in tune with the natural world as well as his true nature, and what it's like to return, fortified, to his real home and to the arms of the one he loves. Along the way, readers can't help but rediscover the joys of being alive.
A Newbery Honor Book. One summer day, newlywed mice Abel and Amanda are out for a picnic in the woods when they are caught in a sudden storm--a "full-fledged, screaming hurricane" to be precise. As they take refuge in a cave, a wind scoops up Amanda's scarf, and Abel foolishly lunges from safety to retrieve it. So begins William Steig's Newbery Honor Book Abel's Island, the ensuing adventures of this rather foppish mouse as he comes head to head with nature. Amazingly, Abel is swept up in a stream, then a river, then eventually marooned on an island (about 12,000 tails long). He is sure that his rescue is imminent: "It's certainly gotten around that Abelard Hassam di Chirico Flint, of the Mossville Flints, is missing," the society mouse speculates. But he is not so lucky. What will this intelligent, imaginative rodent do to get off the island and back to his beloved Amanda? He busies himself with finding ways to get to shore (including bridges, boats, catapults, stepping stones, and gliders); figuring out what he should eat (everything from mulberries to roasted seeds); and investigating where he should take shelter (in a rotten log). As the weeks and months go by, he misses his books, his paintings, his comfortable stuffed chair, his stylish clothes (now damp, torn, and lumpy), but above all his precious wife Amanda, whom he thinks about constantly. As the mouse faces his new life Robinson Crusoe-style, Abel discovers what it's like to be in tune with the natural world as well as his true nature, and what it's like to return, fortified, to his real home and to the arms of the one he loves. Along the way, readers can't help but rediscover the joys of being alive.
This story truly deserves its classic status and Newbery Honor - first pub. in 1976, this copy in 1985. I recommend it for family reading and discussion. Abel's Island will bring up many questions - it is a story told simply, in beautiful prose, with very deep ideas. The author is also the illustrator and his black and white drawings wonderfully amplify the text.
great story and great illustrations.
"There was no trouble in locating the best book of the year, William Steig's Abel's Island...Abelard is, one hopes, all of us-proud, resourceful, despairing, persevering and, eventually, triumphant. And so is Mr. Steig triumphant in the quality of his prose-nor has he stinted on the quality and quantity of his illustrations." --George A. Woods, The New York Times
This is the book. About a cultured mouse who becomes stranded on an island and misses his wife.
