Island of the Blue Dolphins

Island of the Blue Dolphins is a 1960 children's novel by the American author Scott O'Dell. It tells the story of a girl named Karana who is stranded alone for years on an island off the California coast, and it is based on the true story of Juana Maria, a Nicoleño Native American who was left alone for eighteen years on San Nicolas Island during the nineteenth century.

The novel won the Newbery Medal in 1961 and was adapted into a film of the same name three years later. O'Dell wrote a sequel, Zia, published in 1976.

Karana's practical problem is the whole of the plot: shelter, food, tools and the animals she lives alongside, and the novel's method is to show her acquiring the skills her community had assigned to men. That is why the book is read as both a survival story and a study of what a person becomes when the ordinary division of labour disappears. The island also brings the hunters who visit it and the animals she shares it with, so her solitude is never quite undisturbed.