As a child, the Disney adaptation of The Swiss Family Robinson was one of my favorites movies my grandma had at her house. Because she only had one or two other VHS to choose from, I ended up watching this movie a lot. There’s just something alluring about a treehouse, and having wild animals as pets, and fighting off pirates.
My mom read the book aloud for school, but I only remembered
one part where one of the boys, Ernst, asks to be left in solitude so he can
pretend to be Robinson Crusoe, and his dad says he’s already gotten enough
experience.
In re-reading it this year, I came to the unfortunate
realization that there was a reason this was the only thing I remembered. The
book is overall boring.
And, for those who like the movie and haven’t read the book, spoilers: there are no pirates.
The lack of pirates is not my main complaint. Neither is it
the weird decision for the author to include flamingos and penguins in
the same environment as ostriches, duckbilled platypus, South American tapirs,
and a menagerie of other random animals from distant parts of the globe.
(Which, considering other deserted island stories, isn’t necessarily unusual;
apparently, there’s a polar bear in the TV show Lost.)
It’s the tone of the
narrator, the father. Everything that comes out of his mouth is a lesson,
whether it’s geology, botany, zoology, or morality. He seems to know how to
make and do everything. He also constantly refers to his wife as “my wife” (or,
in some bizarre instances, “the mother”), and it’s not until several chapters
in that he slips and calls her “Elizabeth” (and it’s just that one time!).
It made me almost embarrassed to have had a copy of this
book on my shelves for years.
When I got to the end, however, there was an afterword that
explained, and partially excused, many of my problems with this book.
Apparently, the authorship of The Swiss Family Robinson is a bit of a
potpourri. The chapters were initially episodic adventures by a pastor, Johann
Wyss, to help illustrate those educational things to his children. When one of
those children grew up (also named Johann Wyss), he compiled the adventures
into a book. Eventually, a French Baroness decided she wanted to add some drama
to the end of the book, and got permission to write an alternate ending. In it, she added a girl castaway (who is included in the Disney adaptation), but it
stands in stark contrast to the rest of the book because it lacks the same
detailed analysis of every plant and animal they encounter.
In short, if you read this book, read it episodically for
educational purposes, like The Magic School Bus series. But skip the
part about the penguins.
OMG, this book! Had I read it as a child- intensely interested in animals then as now- I probably would have loved it. But I first tried it as an adult, and couldn't stomach even one chapter. I was first baffled and amused, then irritated and exasperated at the presence of wildlife- so many specialists from so many different types of habitat! No way they could co-exist, even if some weird anomaly put them together on the island. I tossed it aside pretty quickly.
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