The Little Island

What makes me smile about Margaret Wise Brown's The Little Island is more than the memory of being 6 years old, reading with my grandmother on the beach. It's Weisgard's drifting watercolor clouds and big blue cat's eyes, the softly-illustrated naturalist drama of being "a part of the world and a world of one's own." I love the sweetness of its frame, the gentle assurance that the world will go on despite storms. Seasons pass, the landscape shifts, nights and days melt into each other, and still the island sits, alone and connected. While the story's brief commentary on the value of blind belief may not translate well to our information age, there is pleasure and comfort in its reminder to keep our lives in perspective. The show more illustrations of the Maine coast lend Brown's story a softness and a splendor befitting its grand romanticism. show less

By Margaret Wise Brown, but it isn't super boring like Goodnight Moon (sorry, not sorry). I like you get a little science thrown into this book that shows an island moving through the different seasons, and all the living things to come to visit it.

Summary: The Little Island is about a small island that experiences the changing seasons and the plants and animals living there. A kitten visits the island and learns from a fish that everything, even the small island, is connected to the rest of the world. The theme of this book is that no matter how small you feel in the world, your actions can make an impact and you can make great change.
Comments: This book is adorable and I love how imaginative and creative it is written and illustrated. Growing up I was always very fascinated with remote land, specifically islands. I could see myself absolutely loving this picture book as a young girl, and I definitely want to inlcude it (or literature similar) into my future classroom.

At the beginning, I wasn't really interested in this book, but by the end I really enjoyed reading it. The main idea of this book is to show children the seasons and animals that pass over this little island in a little more than a years time. One reason I liked this book was because of the descriptive language. Some examples are "one tickly smelling pear tree", "soft wet shadow" and "little waxy white-pink chuckleberry blossoms". The author uses fun and very specific language to help paint a mental image in the child's head. Another reason is how it shows the seasons coming and going, and yet the island remaining the way it has always been. It says "Autumn came and the yellow pears dropped" and "Winter came and the snow fell softly". show more Just the way the author depicts the changing seasons is really neat to me, and I'm sure children will enjoy it too. show less

This book goes through the story of a little island inside the ocean going through the seasons and new additions that join it. In the middle of the story a cat comes to the island, and has a conversation with it as it realizes that islands are a living thing just as much as the cat is. It continues to go on about the importance of living things, all of its aspects, and how we can take care of one another.

"The Little Island" is about a small island in the ocean. The book goes through all the seasons on the island and what happens to plants and animals during each season. A curious cat wondered why the little island said that is was part of the big world when it was clearly surrounded by water. Because the cat couldn't swim, he had to take what a fish said by faith. The fish told the cat about the island being connected to all the land in the world.

I liked this book, especially the illustrations; they look like paintings. I actually learned about a couple sea-critters. I had no idea that lobsters shed their exoskeletons in the Spring. I would recommend this book to children and adults! In this course, I am learning that children's show more literature is really something special, and adults should crack them open too!

This book would be an awesome addition to a lesson about seasons. The author does a great job describing what happens and what variety of plants grow during each season. It could also support a lesson about oceans. I like that the book points out that all land is connected. That's pretty cool. show less

I'm forever attracted to island books, so I bought this on Lopez Island. I loved it until the introduction of the kitten, which I thought was too cutesy (I'm not a cat person, so that may have something to do with my feelings). I would have liked it better without the kitten. I did like that the kitten learned a lesson from the fish. When the kitten leaves, the story returns to its unique viewpoint of the island itself, which I think is the heart of the story.