Read this when
Robinson Crusoe
Crusoe coped with 28 years on an island by listing the bad and the good in two columns. Honestly? Not bad therapy for 1719. 📝
Who it's for
Crusoe's island years are a detailed model of coping with prolonged isolation: he salvages what he can, builds shelter, keeps a calendar and a journal, and slowly learns crafts through trial and error.
Feelings it meets
What it is
Daniel Defoe's 1719 novel is presented as the autobiography of Robinson Crusoe, the only survivor of a shipwreck, who spends 28 years on a remote tropical island. He salvages supplies from the wreck, builds a shelter, keeps a calendar by cutting marks into a wooden cross, and learns to grow crops and raise livestock. Through reading the Bible he becomes deeply religious.
Where to find it
Public domain in the US; free on Project Gutenberg and Standard Ebooks, with free LibriVox audiobooks. Also widely in print (Penguin Classics, Oxford World's Classics and others), in libraries (Libby/.
Before you start
Heads up: Slavery and violent killings.
Age: Ages 12+
Everywhere I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded.Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, Chapter 10
