The Coral Island

Three boys, fifteen-year-old Ralph Rover (the narrator), eighteen-year-old Jack Martin and fourteen-year-old Peterkin Gay, are the sole survivors of a shipwreck on the coral reef of a large but uninhabited Polynesian island. At first their life on the island is idyllic; food, in the shape of fruits, fish and wild pigs, is plentiful, and using their only possessions; a broken telescope, an iron-bound oar and a small axe, they fashion a shelter and even construct a small boat. Their first contact with other people comes after several months when they observe two large outrigger canoes land on the beach. The two groups are engaged in battle and the three boys intervene to successfully defeat the attacking party, earning the gratitude of the chief Tararo. The Polynesians leave and the three boys are alone once more. Then more unwelcome visitors arrive in the shape of pirates, who make a living trading, or stealing, sandalwood. The three boys conceal themselves in a hidden cave, but Ralph is captured when he sets out to see if the pirates have left, and is taken aboard the pirate schooner. Ralph strikes up an unexpected friendship with one of the pirates, "Bloody Bill", and when they call at an island to trade for more wood he meets Tararo again. On the island he sees all facets of island life, including the popular sport of surfing, as well as the practice of infanticide and cannibalism. Rising tension leads to an attack by the inhabitants on the pirates, leaving only Ralph alive and Bloody Bill mortally wounded. However they manage to make their escape in the schooner. After Bill dies, making a death-bed repentance for his evil life, Ralph manages to sail back to the Coral Island to be re-united with his friends.

Two classic adventure yarns one set on a tropical island fraught with danger; the other, in the frozen wilds of North America.

The Red River Settlement is home to many Indians, French-Canadians, and Scotsmen. Charlie Kennedy lives at Red River with his ex fur-trader father. In an attempt to convince Charlie to lead a more sensible life than he did, his father fills Charlie's mind with stories of his dangerous past life, but the adventure only draws Charlie in. Based on Ballantyne's own experiences, this novel details Charlie's encounters with voyagers, Indians, and the intrepid Jacques Caradoc. Lively prose and makes this novel perfect for fans of Rudyard Kipling's 'The Jungle Book.' Robert Michael Ballantyne (1825 - 1894) was a Scottish author. Born into a family of famous printers and publishers, his expertise was juvenile fiction, and he wrote over 100 hugely successful books in this genre. The most notable of these include ‘The Coral Island’, ‘The Eagle Cliff’, and ‘The Gorilla Hunters’. Famed for his tendency to fully immerse himself into the environment of whichever story he was working on, his lively prose is unmissable for those who enjoyed Matt Haig’s ‘The Midnight Library’.Robert Michael Ballantyne (1825 - 1894) was a Scottish author. Born into a family of famous printers and publishers, his expertise was juvenile fiction, and he wrote over 100 hugely successful books in this genre. The most notable of these include ‘The Coral Island’, ‘The Eagle Cliff’, and ‘The Gorilla Hunters’. Famed for his tendency to fully immerse himself into the environment of whichever story he was working on, his lively prose is unmissable for those who enjoyed Matt Haig’s ‘The Midnight Library’.

A plane crashes on a desert island and the only survivors, a group of schoolboys, assemble on the beach and wait to be rescued. By day they inhabit a land of bright fantastic birds and dark blue seas, but at night their dreams are haunted by the image of a terrifying beast. As the boys' delicate sense of order fades, so their childish dreams are transformed into something more primitive, and their behaviour starts to take on a murderous, savage significance. First published in 1954, Lord of the Flies is one of the most celebrated and widely read of modern classics. Now fully revised and updated, this educational edition includes chapter summaries, comprehension questions, discussion points, classroom activities, a biographical profile of Golding, historical context relevant to the novel and an essay on Lord of the Flies by William Golding entitled 'Fable'. Aimed at Key Stage 3 and 4 students, it also includes a section on literary theory for advanced or A-level students. The educational edition encourages original and independent thinking while guiding the student through the text - ideal for use in the classroom and at home.

Attending to the mid-Victorian boys’ adventure novel and its connections with missionary culture, Michelle Elleray investigates how empire was conveyed to Victorian children in popular forms, with a focus on the South Pacific as a key location of adventure tales and missionary efforts. The volume draws on an evangelical narrative about the formation of coral islands to demonstrate that missionary investments in the socially marginal (the young, the working class, the racial other) generated new forms of agency that are legible in the mid-Victorian boys’ adventure novel, even as that agency was subordinated to Christian values identified with the British middle class. Situating novels by Frederick Marryat, R. M. Ballantyne and W. H. G. Kingston in the periodical culture of the missionary enterprise, this volume newly historicizes British children’s textual interactions with the South Pacific and its peoples. Although the mid-Victorian authors examined here portray British presence in imperial spaces as a moral imperative, our understanding of the "adventurer" is transformed from the plucky explorer to the cynical mercenary through Robert Louis Stevenson, who provides a late-nineteenth-century critique of the imperial and missionary assumptions that subtended the mid-Victorian boys’ adventure novel of his youth.

When three boys find themselves shipwrecked on a South Pacific Island, they must learn to survive in a sometimes beautiful, sometimes deadly new world. A classic tale of high adventure and boyhood courage.