Abigail's letter is a very concrete clue that suggests that the mystery WILL get solved and the book IS more than just allegory, and then it just gets completely dropped.
I 100% agree. If there are no answers and there will never be answers, okay, but certain things about the situation are concrete enough—Abigail’s books and letter, the boats sent by Someone coming from Somewhere—that it reads more like the author had an answer and just didn’t want to tell me. If the new kids just appeared in a certain grove and the oldest kid had to spend the night in said grove and would disappear by morning, I wouldn’t expect a rational explanation for that. (I’d still like one, but I wouldn’t expect one.)
Now, I partly agree that becoming an adult is kind of impossible to really explain to a child, because you have to experience it to really understand it. However, I think it's possible to at least try if a child wants to know. But the caterpillar/butterfly metaphor works for me, and the point does at least make sense.
Yes, this one does make sense to me! Not sure why this is the one that springs to mind, but did you ever read S.E. Hinton’s book The Puppy Sister? It’s about a puppy adopted by a family who wants to become a human so much that she magically begins to. If you take it as an allegory, it’s about how hard growth and change can be, and also how rewarding they can be. And it’s a satisfying story on its own. All I get from the end of Orphan Island is that adolescence/leaving childhood is terrible, which is a wild thing to tell kids!
no subject
I 100% agree. If there are no answers and there will never be answers, okay, but certain things about the situation are concrete enough—Abigail’s books and letter, the boats sent by Someone coming from Somewhere—that it reads more like the author had an answer and just didn’t want to tell me. If the new kids just appeared in a certain grove and the oldest kid had to spend the night in said grove and would disappear by morning, I wouldn’t expect a rational explanation for that. (I’d still like one, but I wouldn’t expect one.)
Now, I partly agree that becoming an adult is kind of impossible to really explain to a child, because you have to experience it to really understand it. However, I think it's possible to at least try if a child wants to know. But the caterpillar/butterfly metaphor works for me, and the point does at least make sense.
Yes, this one does make sense to me! Not sure why this is the one that springs to mind, but did you ever read S.E. Hinton’s book The Puppy Sister? It’s about a puppy adopted by a family who wants to become a human so much that she magically begins to. If you take it as an allegory, it’s about how hard growth and change can be, and also how rewarding they can be. And it’s a satisfying story on its own. All I get from the end of Orphan Island is that adolescence/leaving childhood is terrible, which is a wild thing to tell kids!