Nim's Island: Homeschooling and Castaways

Have you read Nim's Island by Wendy Orr? We are currently listening to the story on CD having watched and enjoyed the movie. My sons are already well aware of the differences between book and movie versions of stories: Harry Potter, How to Train Your Dragon, and The Water Horse all come to mind. In each case, the book and the movie often shared only superficial resemblances. It has, therefore, become our habit, to read the book first (usually) before seeing the film. In this case, we are doing things a bit backwards. It has not harmed the tale, though. There are certain distinct liberties that the film version takes with the story but the two stories manage to run parallel to one another rather than being in conflict.

At any rate,Nim's Island, though at first it brings to mind all those 18th century castaway novels (The Swiss Family Robinson , Robinson Crusoe) is more in line with another classic -- and favorite book in our house,Pippi Longstocking . Both Pippi and Nim are 'castaways' -- separated from their father by the sea. In Pippi's case, of course, she is castaway in a very strange world, that of 'civilization', a place which includes public school and proper tea parties. Nim, on the other hand, is a more proper castaway. She is stranded, if you wish to see it that way, on an island by herself. Both girls use their wits -- and very creative wits at that -- to deal with 'the bad guys' who come around and threaten their idyllic existences. But, of course, this existence is not entirely idyllic for both girls desperately miss their fathers, the only parent they have truly known.

Another similarity between Pippi and Nim is that both girls are 'home' schooled with their father's teaching them what they deem important for the girls' survival. These skills are not in the ordinary way: both girls are very talented in understanding the languages of animals and have a fine sense of the sea and of island living. They know how to make what they need from whatever is around them and because of their rather unusual educations, are not at all afraid to try something 'new'. Indeed, to them 'new' is not really even a concept. They create as they go, as naturally as they breathe. The image presented of 'home' schooling in these stories is quirky, perhaps, but hopeful. It seems to imply that if we provide our children with the freedom to learn and breathe and create, if we do not try to make them fit their thinking into a box, they will grow and learn and be thinking and intelligent beings capable of handling incredible challenges because that is what they have been prepared, in some sense, to do.

Now I have sons -- and one might think that they would not readily identify with female heroines but this has not been the case. Both Pippi and Nim, brave and bold and creative heroines, are also the embodiment of childhood.  There is an almost genderless quality to the energy that they exude -- an adventurous and inventive excitement to their stories that draws the reader/listener in.  No matter that you are a boy or an adult, Nim and Pippi speak to something deep inside and their successes and their fears are readily recognized