N    112  English Books I learnt in High School  (part  2  )

Coral Island

Coral Island  is about the adventures of 3 teenage boys who happened to meet on a ship bound for the islands of the Pacific Ocean. On their first trip their ship met  a dreadful storm and got wrecked. The 3 boys escaped death by clinging to an oar and they were washed ashore of an island.

They survived by eating coconuts, oysters and what food the island had to offer them. Later they discovered an underwater cave where they can hide from enemies.

They  encountered island people who were cannibals, and  came in canoes to their island, and also a pirate ship, but they overcame all dangers and even got hold of the pirate ship. With that ship the boys sailed back to their home in England via Tahiti where they recruit a crew of sailors and thus left behind the beautiful, bright green Coral Islands of the Pacific Ocean.

The Kon Tiki Expedition

Kon Tiki is the name of the chief God of the Indians of Peru of South America. The inhabitants of the Pacific Islands claimed  that he is son of the Sun and the original founder of their race.

While staying on a small island in the middle of the Pacific the author Thor Heyerdahl started to think about the origin of the people who inhabited the South Sea Islands such as Polynesia , Samoa, Easter Island, Tahiti and Fiji. The islands are far apart,but the people speak the same language , Polynesian.

There also is history that before the Inca Indians came to Peru, there was a race of white skin people, who put up enormous monuments, and taught the Incas agriculture, But they left Peru as suddenly as they had come and they disappeared forever across the Pacific.

So the author thought , are these island people, the people who left Peru long ago and came to settle in these islands. But how did they cross the ocean? They had only rafts made of balsa wood and could they reach the islands in these rafts?

To prove this theory , the author and 5 friends acquired a balsa woof raft and sailed the Pacific, faced many difficulties and like many stories had a happy ending.

Treasures of a kingdom

I don’t have this book in my possession, so I cannot even give a short gist of it.As much as I remember it is a treasure hunting story and the setting is in Thailand. But I remember one thing and that is the long question I had to answer in the final exam.I had to write about “Ordeal by Water “ The treasures may had been hidden in a cave and to reach that place the characters in the story had to swim or dive in water.It was not easy ,so that it was dubbed ordeal which means a very unpleasant and prolonged experience. If interested anybody can look for that book in some library or old book stores.

Now I have described 5 books I had learnt in Matric class about half a century ago.After us I remember the books prescribed for Matric class students are more easier and only one book was prescribed

The English texts prescribed for students in our country are all abridged or made easy with limited vocabularyfor students who are learnind English as a 2^nd language. But all are interesting in their own way. As for me I would read from beginning to end as soon as I get them, at the start of the school term.They can be called classics by now, but they will never become out of date and are good for English learners. So students who are starting to learn English should look for them,  to improve their English or simply for leisurely reading.