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50 free Island of the Blue Dolphins trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Island of the Blue Dolphins is the rare school novel that is also a true story. Scott O'Dell built Karana from a real woman who spent nearly two decades alone on San Nicolas Island, and the archaeology of her life is still turning up surprises. These fifty questions move between the book and the history behind it: Karana's family and the Aleut hunters, the creatures she tames, what she wears and how she builds, then the real rescue of 1853, the people of the island, O'Dell's own unlikely career, the sequel Zia and the 1964 film. It suits anyone who read the novel in fifth or sixth grade and wants to know how much of it really happened, as well as teachers looking for a ready-made classroom round.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01How many years did the real Lone Woman of San Nicolas Island live alone before her 1853 rescue?
18
18 years: the schooner that removed her people in 1835 never came back, and nobody found her until the third search expedition of 1853.
Q 02Who runs back for a fishing spear, making Karana jump from the ship in Island of the Blue Dolphins?
Ramo
Ramo, her little brother, is killed by a pack of wild dogs soon afterwards, leaving Karana alone on the island for years.
Q 03What does Karana name the pack leader she wounds, then nurses back to health in Island of the Blue Dolphins?
Rontu
Rontu, whose pack killed her brother, becomes her closest companion; when he dies she adopts a lookalike pup and names him Rontu-Aru.
Q 04Which Aleut girl befriends Karana while she hides from the returning hunters in Island of the Blue Dolphins?
Tutok
Tutok and Karana exchange gifts, and only then does Karana realise how lonely she has been; the next day the hunters' ship sails.
Q 05Which sea creature does Karana finally hunt with her dog's help in Island of the Blue Dolphins?
A giant devilfish
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.
Q 06Karana's finest dress, which her rescuers judge unfit for the mainland in Island of the Blue Dolphins, is made of what?
Cormorant feathers
Cormorant feathers, the same greenish plumage the real Lone Woman was wearing as a skirt when searchers found her in 1853.
Q 07Karana's house, like the real Lone Woman's hut rediscovered in 1939, was framed with what material?
Whale bones
Whale bones framed the real hut too: archaeologists found its remains in 1939, exactly where the 1853 rescuers had described it.
Q 08What name was the Lone Woman of San Nicolas Island given at her deathbed baptism, her birth name being unknown?
Juana Maria
Juana Maria was the Spanish name chosen by the priest who baptised her conditionally, because nobody on the mainland could understand her language.
Q 09Which California mission took in the Lone Woman of San Nicolas Island in 1853 and later buried her in its cemetery?
Santa Barbara
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.
Q 10How 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
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.
Q 11The hunters whose ship brings war to Karana's village in Island of the Blue Dolphins come for the pelts of which mammal?
Sea otter
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.
Q 12Which captain leads the fur-hunting ship whose crew kills Karana's father in Island of the Blue Dolphins?
Orlov
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.
Q 13What is the name of Karana's father, the chief killed fighting the hunters in Island of the Blue Dolphins?
Chowig
Q 21The Nicoleño of San Nicolas Island were thought closely related to which people, who also held Santa Catalina Island?
The Tongva
The Tongva of today's Los Angeles County held the southern Channel Islands; the Chumash, on the northern islands, called the Nicoleño 'Niminocotch'.
Q 22The few surviving Nicoleño words, including 'toygwah' for sky, place the Lone Woman's language in which family?
Uto-Aztecan
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.
Q 23Whose Native Alaskan hunters, arriving on the brig Il'mena, massacred most of San Nicolas Island's men in 1814?
The Russian-American Company
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.
Q 14What is the name of Karana's village in Island of the Blue Dolphins, also the Chumash name for San Nicolas Island?
Ghalas-at
Ghalas-at is what the Chumash called the real island; the islanders' own name for themselves has never been recovered.
Q 15Which fur trapper, on his third expedition, finally found the Lone Woman of San Nicolas Island in 1853?
George Nidever
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.
Q 16Which schooner under Charles Hubbard fled a storm in 1835, leaving the Lone Woman of San Nicolas Island behind?
Peor es Nada
Peor es Nada, 'Nothing is Worse', never returned: it sank at the mouth of San Francisco Bay before it could go back for her.
Q 17Seven weeks after reaching the mainland in 1853, the Lone Woman of San Nicolas Island died of what?
Dysentery
Dysentery, which her rescuer blamed on her sudden fondness for green corn, vegetables and fresh fruit after years of shellfish and seal fat.
Q 18The Lone Woman of San Nicolas Island's dress was reportedly sent where, only to be lost?
The Vatican
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.
Q 19Which organisation placed a plaque for the Lone Woman of San Nicolas Island at her mission cemetery grave in 1928?
Daughters of the American Revolution
The Daughters of the American Revolution marked a grave nobody can pinpoint: she lies unmarked somewhere in her rescuer's family plot.
Q 20San Nicolas Island, the most remote of California's Channel Islands, lies how far from the nearest mainland point?
61 miles
61 miles (98 km) of open water separate it from the coast, farther out than any other Channel Island.
The Russian-American Company's hunters left perhaps twenty islanders alive; the schooner that removed the survivors in 1835 left one woman behind.
Q 24Which Spanish explorer named San Nicolas Island after sighting it on Saint Nicholas's feast day in 1602?
Sebastián Vizcaíno
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.
Q 25Who controls San Nicolas Island today, using it as a weapons test range that is closed to the public?
The United States Navy
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.
Q 26San Nicolas Island was one of eight candidate sites for what, before White Sands in New Mexico was picked?
The first atomic test
The first atomic test, Trinity, went to White Sands instead; the island remains part of the Pacific Missile Range.
Q 27How many Nicoleño words were ever translated, all of them recorded from the Lone Woman of San Nicolas Island?
Four
Four words (tocah, nache, toygwah and puoochay: hide, man, sky and body) plus two songs are all that remain of the language.
Q 28Officially uninhabited, San Nicolas Island is counted by the Census Bureau as part of which California county?
Ventura
Ventura County: the island's 10,000-foot runway is the county's second longest, behind only Naval Air Station Point Mugu.
Q 29Which international prize, honouring a children's author's whole body of work, did Scott O'Dell receive in 1972?
The Hans Christian Andersen Award
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.
Q 30In which country did a translation of Island of the Blue Dolphins win the national youth-literature prize in 1963?
West Germany
West Germany's Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis went to the German edition, Insel der blauen Delphine, two years after the Newbery.