Simon Roy
BOOKS
Island of the Blue Dolphins and the Dream of Loneliness
How the great children’s novel about a girl left alone on an island in the Pacific was written—and the real girl whose story inspired it.
BY LAURA MILLERNOV 10, 2016
On any given afternoon of my 11th summer, I could be found in the most unkempt corner of my family’s suburban California back yard, building tiny racks with twigs and grass and draping strips of uncooked bacon over them. I dug pits lined with stones and attempted to fashion splintered chicken bones into spearheads. A neighborhood friend often joined me there; we’d just read Scott O’Dell’s Island of the Blue Dolphins and we were obsessed.