50 Fun Facts About Island of the Blue Dolphins

How many years did the real Lone Woman of San Nicolas Island live alone before her 1853 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, a massive creature like an octopus or squid, is the prize she and her dog finally land together after she has mastered spear-making.

Karana's finest dress, which her rescuers judge unfit for the mainland in Island of the Blue Dolphins, is made of what?

Cormorant feathers, the same greenish plumage the real Lone Woman was wearing as a skirt when searchers found her in 1853.

Karana's house, like the real Lone Woman's hut rediscovered in 1939, was framed with what material?

Whale bones framed the real hut too: archaeologists found its remains in 1939, exactly where the 1853 rescuers had described it.

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

Juana Maria was the Spanish name chosen by the priest who baptised her conditionally, because nobody on the mainland could understand her language.

Which California mission took in the Lone Woman of San Nicolas Island in 1853 and later buried her in its cemetery?

Santa Barbara's mission buried her in an unmarked grave in the plot of the family that had taken her in; a plaque was added in 1928.

How did the writer born O'Dell Gabriel Scott end up publishing Island of the Blue Dolphins as Scott O'Dell?

A book misprinted his name as Scott O'Dell and he simply kept it, using it on all 26 of his novels for young people.

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 massacred most of the 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, on his third expedition, finally found the Lone Woman of San Nicolas Island in 1853?

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 under Charles Hubbard fled a storm in 1835, leaving the Lone Woman of San Nicolas Island behind?

Peor es Nada, 'Nothing is Worse', never returned: it sank at the mouth of San Francisco Bay before it could go back for her.

Seven weeks after reaching the mainland in 1853, the Lone Woman of San Nicolas Island 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 placed a plaque for the Lone Woman of San Nicolas Island at her mission cemetery grave in 1928?

The Daughters of the American Revolution marked a grave nobody can pinpoint: she lies unmarked somewhere in her rescuer's family plot.

San Nicolas Island, the most remote of California's Channel Islands, lies how far from the nearest mainland point?

61 miles (98 km) of open water separate it from the coast, farther out than any other Channel Island.

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 County held the southern Channel Islands; the Chumash, on the northern islands, called the Nicoleño 'Niminocotch'.

The few surviving Nicoleño words, including '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, massacred most of San Nicolas Island's men in 1814?

The Russian-American Company's hunters left perhaps twenty islanders alive; the schooner that removed the survivors in 1835 left one woman behind.

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 weapons 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, went to White Sands instead; the island remains part of the Pacific Missile Range.

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 island's 10,000-foot runway is the county's second longest, behind only Naval Air Station Point Mugu.

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 is biennial and judged internationally; by then O'Dell had three Newbery runner-up books as well as his Medal.

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 his next publisher persuaded him that the adult novel he had written was really a children's book.

By his own account, what prompted Scott O'Dell to write Island of the Blue Dolphins in the first place?

Animal cruelty near his home pushed him to write a story promoting respect for all life, which is why Karana vows never again to hunt the creatures she tames.

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 published nearly every O'Dell novel that followed, from Zia to Sing Down the Moon and his Sacagawea story.

Which fellow Newbery Medalist wrote the introduction to the 50th Anniversary edition of Island of the Blue Dolphins?

Lois Lowry's introduction sits beside extracts from the mission's Book of Burials recording the real woman's 1853 funeral.

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.

Island of the Blue Dolphins is told from which point of view, a choice scholars say strengthens Karana's portrait?

First person: Karana tells her own story, and critic Anita Tarr argues its gaps and her spare 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, after she refuses to live and work at the mission?

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 drew inspiration from Scott O'Dell's Newbery Honor novel The King's Fifth?

The Mysterious Cities of Gold, a Japan-France co-production aired in several countries, grew out of O'Dell's 1966 tale of Spanish gold-seekers.

How much does the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction, which the author set up himself, pay its winner?

$5,000 goes to an American author's historical novel for young readers; O'Dell himself won it in 1987 for his Sacagawea novel.

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.

Scott O'Dell, who died aged 91 in 1989, was born in 1898 in which part of Los Angeles?

Terminal Island, in Los Angeles, made him island-born; his ashes were scattered in the Pacific off La Jolla.

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

Julian, in the mountains east of San Diego, is where he said he found quiet and motivation, and Island of the Blue Dolphins followed in 1960.

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.