- The Cay
infobox Book
name = The Cay
author = Theodore Taylor
publisher = Avon
country =United States
language = English
genre =Children's novel
release_date =1969
media_type = Print (Hardback &Paperback )
pages = 105 pp (first edition, paperback)
isbn = ISBN 0-380-01003-8"The Cay" is a middle school level novel written by Theodore Taylor. The story is based on a real incident recounted to Taylor. The novel was published in
1969 .Characters
Phillip Enright: An eleven-year-old boy living on the Dutch island of Curaçao with his family during 1942. After a shipwreck, he is separated from his mother and is washed ashore on a cay with an old black man, Timothy, and a cat. While on the rescue raft he goes blind. After being rescued from the cay and returning to Curaçao, Phillip spent a lot of time talking to the black people of the island, for he felt close to them. Some of them had known Old Timothy of Charlotte Amalie.
Timothy: An old black man in his 70s. Raised in the town of Charlotte Amalie, he worked as a sailor aboard the SS Hato, which was to ferry people from the Dutch island of Curaçao to the Central American country of Panama before it sank. Timothy washed ashore on a cay with Phillip, after pulling him out of the water after the ship sank.
Mrs. Enright: The protective mother of Phillip Enright. She is prejudiced against the blacks living along with her family on the Dutch island of Curaçao. She wanted to take the ocean liner, the SS Hato, instead of an airplane to get away from the invading Nazis because of her fears of flying. She is separated from Phillip Enright when the SS Hato sank. After Phillip's return from the cay, she no longer wished to leave Curaçao.
Mr. Enright: The smart father of Phillip Enright. He moved his family from Virginia to the Dutch island of Curaçao because of his job at the Royal Dutch Shell. After his work at the island was done, he flew away from the invading Nazis by airplane and urged his wife to do the same.
Stew Cat: The cat that belonged to the cook of the SS Hato. After it was torpedoed, Stew Cat jumped on the raft Timothy was on. While they were on the cay, Timothy believed Stew Cat was the source of an evil jumbi, despite Phillip's judgement. When Timothy put Stew Cat on the raft, which scared Phillip, he was actually carving a cat out of wood and nails to scare away the jumbi.
Henrik van Boven: A best friend of Phillip Enright on the Dutch island of Curaçao. They both liked to play Pirates until the Nazis invaded in 1942. After Phillip returned from the cay, Henrik was considered very young and if their friendship still existed, it wasn't the same as before.
Awards and nominations
*1969 Award of the Southern California Council on Literature for Children and Young People
*1970 Jane Addams Book Award
*1970Lewis Carroll Shelf Award
*1970 Commonwealth Club (of California) Award
*1971 Kansas William White AwardTaylor spoke at the
1996 ALAN (TheAssembly on Literature for Adolescents ) Workshop in Chicago regarding one of his awards:"In 1970, long before political correctness found itself to the American scene, I received the Jane Addams Peace and Freedom Foundation award for "The Cay". Soon after, it was accused of being a racist book. In 1975, finally submitting to great pressure from the Inter-Racial Council on Children's Books and forcing "The Cay's" removal from many bookshelves for four years, the Jane Addams chairlady requested that I return the award after it had hung on my office wall for five years. I did so within the hour, not dusting it off. I sent it collect." [cite web
last = Blasingame
first = James
authorlink = James Blasingame
coauthors = Lori A. Goodson
title = "Exploding the Literary Canon" (text of Taylor's speech at the 1996 ALAN Workshop in Chicago)
work = The ALAN Review, Volume 25, Number 1
publisher = Virginia Tech - Digital Library & Archives
date = Fall 1997url = http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/ALAN/fall97/taylor.html
format = | doi = | accessdate = 2007-03-15 ]In other media
*The book was adapted as a one-hour TV drama in 1974 with
Alfred Lutter III as Phillip,James Earl Jones as Timothy andGretchen Corbett as Phillip's Mother.*In 1993, Taylor published "
Timothy of the Cay ", a book which tells both of Phillip's life after his ordeal and of Timothy's life as a young man!References
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.
