99 Fun Facts About Island of the Blue Dolphins

How many years did the real Lone Woman of San Nicolas Island live alone before her rescue?

18 years: the schooner that removed her people in 1835 never came back, and nobody found her until the third search expedition of 1853.

Who runs back for a fishing spear, making Karana jump from the ship in Island of the Blue Dolphins?

Ramo, her little brother, is killed by a pack of wild dogs soon afterwards, leaving Karana alone on the island for years.

What does Karana name the pack leader she wounds, then nurses back to health in Island of the Blue Dolphins?

Rontu, whose pack killed her brother, becomes her closest companion; when he dies she adopts a lookalike pup and names him Rontu-Aru.

Which Aleut girl befriends Karana while she hides from the returning hunters in Island of the Blue Dolphins?

Tutok and Karana exchange gifts, and only then does Karana realise how lonely she has been; the next day the hunters' ship sails.

Which sea creature does Karana finally hunt with her dog's help in Island of the Blue Dolphins?

A giant devilfish, the novel's name for a large octopus, drags Karana and her dog into a fight that injures them both, and she decides never to hunt one again.

Karana's finest dress, worn to meet her rescuers in Island of the Blue Dolphins, is made of what?

Cormorant feathers also clothed the real Lone Woman when she was found in 1853; in the novel Karana's rescuers sew her a new dress before the ship sails.

Which material, used by Karana for her fence, framed the hut found in 1939 that may have been the real Lone Woman's?

Whale bones: San Nicolas had no trees, so the islanders framed their shelters with whale ribs, as Karana does her fence.

What name was the Lone Woman of San Nicolas Island given at her deathbed baptism, her birth name being unknown?

Juana Maria was the name a priest gave her in a conditional baptism as she lay dying, at the request of her rescuer's wife; her birth name was never recorded.

At which California mission was the Lone Woman of San Nicolas Island buried in 1853?

Santa Barbara's mission cemetery received her, though the exact site of the grave has never been confirmed; she had spent her seven weeks on the mainland in her rescuer's family home.

How did the writer born Odell Gabriel Scott come to be known as Scott O'Dell?

A typesetter's error reversed his name on an early byline, and he liked 'Scott O'Dell' so much that he had it changed legally in the 1920s.

The hunters whose ship brings war to Karana's village in Island of the Blue Dolphins come for the pelts of which mammal?

Sea otter pelts drew Alaskan hunting parties to the real San Nicolas, where an 1814 party killed an unknown number of islanders after accusing them of killing a hunter.

Which captain leads the fur-hunting ship whose crew kills Karana's father in Island of the Blue Dolphins?

Orlov's crew tries to sail off without paying for the pelts, and the battle that follows kills Karana's father and most of the village's men.

What is the name of Karana's father, the chief killed fighting the hunters in Island of the Blue Dolphins?

Chowig confronts the hunters when they try to leave without paying; after his death a new chief paddles east for new land and sends a ship back for the survivors.

What is the name of Karana's village in Island of the Blue Dolphins, also the Chumash name for San Nicolas Island?

Ghalas-at is what the Chumash called the real island; the islanders' own name for themselves has never been recovered.

Which fur trapper led the 1853 expedition, his third attempt, that brought the Lone Woman off San Nicolas Island?

George Nidever had already failed twice; this time one of his men spotted footprints and seal blubber drying on the beach, and the search was over.

Which schooner carried off the people of San Nicolas Island in 1835, leaving the Lone Woman behind?

Peor es Nada never came back for her: the little schooner is said to have sunk at the mouth of San Francisco Bay before it could return, and a shortage of other ships is usually blamed for the delay.

Seven weeks after reaching the mainland in 1853, the Lone Woman of San Nicolas Island is thought to have died of what?

Dysentery, which her rescuer blamed on her sudden fondness for green corn, vegetables and fresh fruit after years of shellfish and seal fat.

The Lone Woman of San Nicolas Island's dress was reportedly sent where, only to be lost?

The Vatican apparently received it but it has never been found; her basket, another of the last Nicoleño objects, burned after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

Which organisation marked the Lone Woman of San Nicolas Island's burial place with a plaque in 1928?

The Daughters of the American Revolution placed it in the mission cemetery, although the exact site of her grave has never been confirmed.

In Island of the Blue Dolphins, the custom of Karana's tribe forbids women to make what?

Weapons were men's work, so Karana first searches the empty village for spearheads; finding none, she breaks the taboo and makes her own bow, arrows and spear.

The Nicoleño of San Nicolas Island were thought closely related to which people, who also held Santa Catalina Island?

The Tongva of today's Los Angeles basin held the southern Channel Islands, but a later study of the Lone Woman's recorded words argued her speech was closer to Luiseño than to theirs.

Surviving Nicoleño words such as 'toygwah' for sky place the Lone Woman's language in which family?

Uto-Aztecan is the family, but linguist Pamela Munro concluded the language sat closest to Luiseño in the Cupan group, possibly as a branch of its own.

Whose Native Alaskan hunters, arriving on the brig Il'mena in 1814, carried out a massacre on San Nicolas Island?

The Russian-American Company's own letters record the killings, though not the toll; by the 1830s only about twenty islanders are thought to have remained.

Which Spanish explorer named San Nicolas Island after sighting it on Saint Nicholas's feast day in 1602?

Sebastián Vizcaíno saw it on 6 December 1602, and the name stuck even though the islanders themselves were later known by it as the Nicoleño.

Who controls San Nicolas Island today, using it as a missile test range that is closed to the public?

The United States Navy runs missile tests and mock streets for urban-warfare training there; visitors can only see similar islands in Channel Islands National Park.

San Nicolas Island was one of eight candidate sites for what, before White Sands in New Mexico was picked?

The first atomic test, Trinity, needed somewhere remote, flat and nearly windless, and in September 1944 the planners chose the New Mexico desert over the island.

How many Nicoleño words were ever translated, all of them recorded from the Lone Woman of San Nicolas Island?

Four words (tocah, nache, toygwah and puoochay: hide, man, sky and body) plus two songs are all that remain of the language.

Officially uninhabited, San Nicolas Island is counted by the Census Bureau as part of which California county?

Ventura County: the census counts the island as uninhabited, yet staff live and work there.

Which international prize, honouring a children's author's whole body of work, did Scott O'Dell receive in 1972?

The Hans Christian Andersen Award came only twelve years after his first children's book, which O'Dell had published when he was already past sixty.

In which country did a translation of Island of the Blue Dolphins win the national youth-literature prize in 1963?

West Germany's Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis went to the German edition, Insel der blauen Delphine, two years after the Newbery.

Why did the first publisher Scott O'Dell approached turn down Island of the Blue Dolphins?

It wanted a boy hero; O'Dell kept Karana, and only when a friend, the Betsy-Tacy author Maud Hart Lovelace, read the manuscript did he learn he had written a children's book.

Scott O'Dell said Island of the Blue Dolphins 'began in anger' over what?

Animal cruelty near his home was the spark: O'Dell wrote of his anger at hunters who slaughtered the wildlife of the mountains where he lived, which is why Karana comes to spare the animals around her.

Which publisher issued Island of the Blue Dolphins in 1960, as it had O'Dell's adult novel Woman of Spain in 1934?

Houghton Mifflin got the manuscript after writer's block had held O'Dell to three adult novels in 24 years; Karana's story then took him less than a year to write.

What did the 2016 Complete Reader's Edition from the University of California Press add to Island of the Blue Dolphins?

Two cut chapters, dropped before the 1960 publication, were restored by editor Sara L. Schwebel in this critical edition.

From which point of view does Karana's story unfold in Island of the Blue Dolphins?

First person: Karana tells her own story in a spare voice, and critic C. Anita Tarr argues its gaps and her restrained emotions let readers supply the feeling themselves.

In Scott O'Dell's 1976 sequel Zia, what relation is the 14-year-old title character to Karana?

Her niece sets out twice in a small boat with her brother Mando to find her aunt, and both attempts fail before a hunting captain brings Karana back.

At the mission in Scott O'Dell's sequel Zia, which creatures, unknown on her island, fascinate the rescued Karana?

Horses had never reached her island; she also develops a love of melons and learns to weave baskets as the other Mission Indians do.

How does Karana's story end in Scott O'Dell's sequel Zia?

She dies of illness in a cave outside the mission, which would not help her because she would not live and work there; Zia then goes home to the mountains with her dog.

Whose film debut as Karana in the 1964 Island of the Blue Dolphins film won a Golden Globe for Most Promising Newcomer?

Celia Kaye shared the 1965 Golden Globe with Mia Farrow and Mary Ann Mobley, and later married the director John Milius.

Which future Cool Hand Luke Oscar winner played the Aleut captain in the 1964 film of Island of the Blue Dolphins?

George Kennedy won Best Supporting Actor as Dragline three years later, and went on to play Joe Patroni in every Airport film.

Which studio released the 1964 Island of the Blue Dolphins film, from the team behind A Dog of Flanders and Misty?

Universal Pictures gave it a wide release three months after its New York premiere, and it took about $2 million in North American rentals.

Which Scott O'Dell Newbery Honor book was filmed in 1978 with Gilbert Roland and Mario Custodio?

The Black Pearl was one of three O'Dell books named Newbery runners-up, and Saul Swimmer both produced and directed the film version.

Which 1982 Japanese-French anime series borrowed its heroes' names from Scott O'Dell's novel The King's Fifth?

The Mysterious Cities of Gold is often called an adaptation, but its creator Jean Chalopin says only the names of the leads, Esteban, Zia and Mendoza, came from O'Dell's novel.

Scott O'Dell won his own historical fiction award for Streams to the River, River to the Sea, a novel about which woman?

Sacagawea's journey with Lewis and Clark won him the 1987 prize, and he gave the $5,000 award money away to the Children's Book Council.

Who was the first recipient of the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction, in 1984, for The Sign of the Beaver?

Elizabeth George Speare won it only after the committee withheld the prize in 1982 and 1983, finding no book of sufficient merit.

Which new chief paddles east to seek a new home for Karana's people in Island of the Blue Dolphins?

Kimki takes charge after the battle with the hunters and never comes back himself, but the ship he sends for his people is the one that sails without Karana.

In which old mining town east of San Diego did Scott O'Dell live in the 1950s, finding quiet to write?

Julian gave him the quiet he lacked in Los Angeles, where a busy social life kept getting in the way, and he wrote Karana's story there in less than a year.

Besides her dog, which pets sail with Karana to the mainland at the end of Island of the Blue Dolphins?

Two birds she has tamed go with her, and at the mission a priest tells her the ship that took her people had sunk before it could return for her.

What did Jon Erlandson find eroding from a San Nicolas Island cliff in 2009, packed with some two hundred artifacts?

Two redwood boxes held bird-bone pendants, abalone fish hooks and Alaskan harpoon tips, a cache that may have been the Lone Woman's own.

For which readers did Scott O'Dell think he was writing Island of the Blue Dolphins, until others read the manuscript?

Adults were the audience he had in mind: he took the story for another historical novel until those who read the manuscript saw a children's book.

Which Prohibition lawman was once married to the artist behind the first cover of Island of the Blue Dolphins?

Eliot Ness, leader of the Untouchables, was the second husband of illustrator Evaline Ness, who kept his name and went on to win the Caldecott Medal for a picture book of her own.

What does the name Karana gives the wild dog she tames mean in her language in Island of the Blue Dolphins?

Fox eyes is the meaning she gives: the big dog led the pack she had sworn to destroy, and she names him only once she trusts that he will not harm her.

What is the real source of the island words Karana teaches her Aleut friend in Island of the Blue Dolphins?

O'Dell's own invention is the source: almost nothing of the islanders' real language survives, because it was never written down and has no living speakers.

Which castaway hero gives his name to the survival-story genre in which scholars place Island of the Blue Dolphins?

Robinson Crusoe lends his name to the Robinsonade, a tale of surviving on a deserted island; this one swaps the shipwrecked Englishman for a girl left behind by her own people.

Karana stays for a brother, but in stories J.P. Harrington gathered, who stayed with the real Lone Woman?

Her son is the companion those accounts describe, and they say she was left by herself only after he died in a canoe accident.

What does Karana do to the empty houses of her village once she is alone in Island of the Blue Dolphins?

Burns them down, every one: she does not want to live in the village by herself, so she makes a new camp on a headland where she can watch for a ship.

In Island of the Blue Dolphins, what does Karana discover about Mon-a-nee, the wounded animal she once hand-fed?

It is a mother, trailed by two young; Karana had chosen the name, which means Little Boy with Large Eyes, believing the animal was male.

What nickname did fur traders give the prized pelts that draw the hunters' ship in Island of the Blue Dolphins?

Soft gold was the trade's name for them: in the 1700s and 1800s no other animal's fur fetched a higher price.

Why did no ship ever come back for Karana, as she finally learns at the mission in Island of the Blue Dolphins?

It had sunk before it could return: the vessel that carried her people away was lost, a fact a priest tells Karana only after all her years alone.

Which older sister of Karana finds a school of white seabass stranded on a ledge in Island of the Blue Dolphins?

Ulape finds the fish, and when the visiting hunters ask for a share the chief refuses, saying there is only enough to feed his own people.

What color are the sails of the Aleut hunters' ship that Karana watches arrive in Island of the Blue Dolphins?

Red sails mark the ship twice over: years later Karana spots the same color on the horizon and moves into a hidden cave before anyone lands.

What payment does the hunters' captain offer for the pelts, enraging Karana's father, in Island of the Blue Dolphins?

One chest of beads was the offer; the chief demanded three more before the last pelts left the shore, and the argument turned into the battle that cost him his life.

Why does Karana give up her attempt to paddle alone to the mainland in Island of the Blue Dolphins?

Her canoe leaks faster than she can patch it with material from her skirt, so she turns back, kept company on the way by leaping dolphins.

Which animal's tooth does Karana want as a spear point to use against the wild dogs in Island of the Blue Dolphins?

A sea elephant, the novel's name for an elephant seal: her first try ends with an injured leg as two bulls fight on the beach, and she takes the teeth later from the larger bull's remains.

Which plant, absent from the real San Nicolas Island, gives Karana twine for a skirt in Island of the Blue Dolphins?

Yucca supplies the twine in the novel, but the real islanders most likely dressed in surf grass, fur, feathers and hides.

What traps Karana and her dog overnight inside Black Cave in Island of the Blue Dolphins?

The rising tide closes the low entrance, leaving them to spend the night beneath a ledge lined with strange tall figures and a skeleton.

What gift does the Aleut girl leave outside Karana's hiding place in Island of the Blue Dolphins?

A black stone necklace is the gift; Karana answers with a circlet of shell disks for the girl's hair, though neither speaks the other's language.

What does Karana vow never to do again once wild creatures are her only companions in Island of the Blue Dolphins?

Never to kill animals again is her resolve: after years of hunting for food and clothing, she has come to see the island's creatures as her friends.

Which shellfish, dried in the sun as winter food, does Karana gather from the reef in Island of the Blue Dolphins?

Abalone has to be guarded while it dries, since gulls and wild dogs steal the meat; islanders off California relied on it for more than 10,000 years.

San Nicolas Island, the real setting of Island of the Blue Dolphins, belongs to which chain off Southern California?

The Channel Islands number eight, and San Nicolas is the most remote of the southern group, about 60 miles from the mainland coast.

The pelts hunted in Island of the Blue Dolphins became the royal fur of which country, where most were sold?

China bought most of the pelts taken on North America's Pacific coast, and the captains sailed home with tea, porcelain and silk in their place.

In which California city, then far smaller than it is today, was Scott O'Dell born in 1898?

Los Angeles was his birthplace, and though the family moved often for his father's railroad job, they never lived far from the ocean.

What first showed the 1853 search party that someone was still living on San Nicolas Island?

Human footprints on the beach, beside pieces of seal blubber left out to dry, led the party to the woman whose story inspired Karana.

Which disaster destroyed the Lone Woman of San Nicolas Island's belongings at the California Academy of Sciences?

The San Francisco earthquake of 1906 wrecked the academy's collections, so her water basket, clothing and bone needles were lost for good.

On what did J.P. Harrington record, in 1913, a song the Lone Woman of San Nicolas Island had sung for visitors?

A wax cylinder holds the song as performed by Fernando Librado, who had learned it from a man said to have heard her sing.

Which Russian colony in Northern California was a stop for fur ships like the one in Island of the Blue Dolphins?

Fort Ross, which Russia ran from 1812 to 1841, was a stop for many ships heading south to hunt among California's offshore islands.

The scarlet apples gathered for winter in Island of the Blue Dolphins are the fruit of which plant?

Prickly pear, a cactus, bears the fruit, also known as tunas, that the village women collect to eat through the cold months.

What does Karana use to lash together the fence that guards her food stores in Island of the Blue Dolphins?

Kelp binds the fence together; no trees grow on the island, so finding poles for the hut beside it costs her many hours of searching.

What is Karana doing in a canyon when the hunters' ship first appears in Island of the Blue Dolphins?

Gathering roots for food is her task that day, while her little brother watches the sea; neither child has ever seen so large a ship.

How does Karana steer her canoe at night on her voyage toward the mainland in Island of the Blue Dolphins?

By the stars, the same guide the islanders' own navigators relied on, along with currents and wave patterns; even so, the waves push her off course.

How does Karana drive the wild dogs out of their cave lair in Island of the Blue Dolphins?

With fire pushed into the mouth of the lair she flushes out the pack and puts an arrow into its leader, then finds she cannot finish him off.

Why does Karana spend most of a summer rebuilding an abandoned canoe in Island of the Blue Dolphins?

To make it smaller and easier to handle alone, so that she can slip away from the island quickly if the Aleut hunters come back.

Who cut the figures into the walls of the cave where Karana rests her injured leg in Island of the Blue Dolphins?

Her ancestors carved them, and the place suits her so well that she later stocks it with food and wood as a second shelter.

What covers the light canoes the Aleut hunters paddle out to their prey in Island of the Blue Dolphins?

Animal skins cover the canoes, and from them the hunters spear so many animals that Karana fears none will be left around the island.

Where does Karana first make camp after abandoning her village in Island of the Blue Dolphins?

On a large rock on a headland, about a mile and a half from Coral Cove, she can watch the ocean for the ship she expects to come back.

Which newspaper job did Scott O'Dell hold while struggling for years to finish his early novels?

Book review editor was his post at a daily paper, where he read widely in literature, history, folklore and psychology while writer's block stalled his own fiction.

The Scott O'Dell Award honors historical fiction from a US publisher that is set in which part of the world?

The Americas, North, Central and South, are the required setting for the $5,000 prize, which O'Dell founded himself.

To which mainland port were the people of San Nicolas Island carried when they were taken off in 1835?

San Pedro is where the schooner landed them, and a Mexican government record places the ship in that harbor by late November of the same year.

In which state, far from the California he wrote about, did Scott O'Dell spend the last years of his life?

New York became his home after he married Elizabeth Hall, and he died there in 1989, though his ashes were scattered in the Pacific.

Which priest in Island of the Blue Dolphins shares a name with the padre who recorded the real Lone Woman's burial?

Father Gonzales tells Karana what became of her people's ship; the real Father González Rubio also paid for an early search for the woman left on the island.

Whose expedition sighted San Nicolas Island in 1543 without landing, decades before the island got its name?

Juan Cabrillo's ships passed the island but made no notes about the people living there, so almost nothing was recorded of them before the 1800s.

For which institution did Paul Schumacher make the first archaeological visit to San Nicolas Island in 1875?

The Smithsonian's 1875 visit began the island's archaeology; early collectors carried off grass matting, bone fishhooks and soapstone effigies.

Which Scott O'Dell novel, a Newbery Honor Book, follows a Navajo shepherd girl named Bright Morning?

Sing Down the Moon follows her from capture by slave catchers to the forced removal of her people from Canyon de Chelly.

What led archaeologist Steve Schwartz to the Lone Woman's sand-filled cave on San Nicolas Island in 2012?

An old survey map from 1879 marked the spot as Indian Cave, and once he had found the field notes that went with it, a search of 20 years was over.

What did the sea captain who took in the Lone Woman of San Nicolas Island blame for her fatal illness?

Fresh fruit and corn, along with vegetables, were his explanation: after years on a spare island diet she was fond of them, and he believed they made her sick.

When does Karana gather food while the Aleut hunters camp near her hiding place in Island of the Blue Dolphins?

After dark is the only safe time, because the hunters' camp stands less than half a league from the ravine where she and her dog are living.

Scott O'Dell joined the military straight from high school, but which war ended before he was sent abroad?

World War I ended before he could be sent abroad, so he went to college instead, studying at several universities without ever taking a degree.

For which two Hollywood studios did Scott O'Dell work before he turned to writing books?

Paramount and MGM both employed him after he left college without a degree, and film work taught him a great deal about screenwriting and storytelling.

Which producer of the 1964 Island of the Blue Dolphins film is best known for the family drama Sounder?

Robert B. Radnitz was advised not to film Sounder, on the view that audiences would stay away, yet it earned a Best Picture nomination.