Nostalgia is a powerful feeling. We go back into time with a simple smell or taste on our tongue. I am nostalgic about books. The pages of a book tell more than just the author’s stories, it tells mine. I underline that word I didn’t know and then laugh years later when I realize that I use that word almost every week now. I see that chocolate smear when I was reading and had the smore at the campfire. The book holds memories, not just a story. My version of The Cay has dog-eared weathered pages, and a broken spine. But I pick it up, and I am eleven years old again.
I remember reading the Cay when I was in 6th grade. It was a year of adventure for me. I read Julie of the Wolves, and White Fang, and Where the Red Fern Grows. I lived on islands, and tundras, on forested hills and deep jungles while never leaving my couch. I found friends with strange accents and stranger customs. I felt the winds from many different places across the world, and they urged me to seek more; to discover what was around the next corner. I don’t remember a time when I felt more adventurous than as an eleven year old girl seeing the world through the words of a novel.
Rereading the story made me fall in love with it all over again. Stew Cat is still my favorite character, and I fear for his life when Timothy worries about the evil spirits. Phillip is still entitled, but grows so much in such a short time. And Timothy. Oh how I remember Timothy. Timothy who was both funny and irritating at the same time. I understand him so much more as an adult than I did as a child. Now I see him through the lens of a much older woman needing to care for those who can’t care for themselves.
But reading it also made me remember the whispers about the book from the adults in my life. Looking at it now, I understand why people rally against it. Timothy is stereotypical, and the ending feels too abrupt. But reading it as an adult has made me feel its charms all the more. It is more simplistic than I remember. I felt like the storm lasted for chapters when in fact it was only a few short pages. But while the story felt more fantastical when I was eleven, as an adult, I realize that Taylor put thought into how one would survive on an island. If anything, it is a good roadmap of survival.
But would I teach it in today’s classroom? Is it relevant in today’s digital world of AI, robots, cell phones, and ever changing tides? Perhaps the words from Taylor’s dedication will more clearly illuminate that point. “To Dr. King’s dream, which can only come true if the very young know and understand”. Taylor has given us a gift that stands the test of time. We are still fighting to see each other as equal, and our digital world has made it even harder to see the person in front of us. But when we adventure with Taylor, we find ourselves having to face against another human and befriend someone different from us. In a world where search generators make it easy for us to find like minded individuals, and harder to see the other perspective, a book like The Cay is actually needed in middle school.
So I find it a shame that middle schools have taken it, along with all the other novels, out of the curriculum. In today’s middle schools, children don’t adventure on cays in the Carribean, or run with wolves in the tundra, or walk through the woods. We don’t ask kids to go on an adventure. We don’t ask them to question their values, or see life from a different perspective. Instead, we ask them to read passages, and then learn a standard. Tell me the theme, or describe the conflict. We don’t ask them to feel a character’s despair because that might trigger their inner trauma. As adults we fear hurting the children in front of us, but we fail to see that children need to see all different kinds of trauma to be resilient. They need to see Timothy fight off a storm and die in order to have Phillip grow as a person. We have forgotten that in our desire to protect children.
If you have an eleven year old in your life, and you want to give them a gift, give them The Cay. Give them the gift of adventure. Let them read about a boy named Phillip, Stew Cat, and an old man Timothy. Let them have an adventure in a far off island from their couch. Let them see that people can change when confronted with their mistaken beliefs, and become a more resilient individual. The world could use more children and adults who want to go adventuring.
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