Do You like book Call It Courage (1990)?
Boy is ridiculed for his fear of the ocean (had killed his mother and almost him when he was little - but I guess you don't get a break just for that!). Boy sets out into the ocean on his own and somehow finds crazy courage to: survive an ocean journey, survive on an island alone, kill wild a pig, shark, and octopus, escape cannibals, survive an ocean journey home, . . . Kind of made finding the courage seem a little too easy.I did use this book as inspiration in my own courage-seeking today - to clean up a dead bunny in our window well. Blah - it was horrible, but I was brave. ;-)
—Ariane
This Newbery winner tells of the trials of Mafatu, a fifteen-year-old Polynesian boy, the son of a chief. Due to a tragedy that took his mother when he was a baby, Mafatu has a great distrust of the sea, so one day he takes a small boat and, accompanied by his dog, forces himself to face his fears. After a storm, he washes up on an island of cannibals. While building a shelter and another boat, he also faces predators and then the return of the cannibals.This slim story is, unfortunately, rather simplistic, and is dramatic only in the way that, say, old Tarzan serials are. First, the book validates the importance of conformity to existing social values; although Mafatu has made himself useful in the making of spears and nets, this is dismissed by his peers (and the tone of the narration) as “women’s work.” Also, disappointingly, Mafatu’s victories are not a result of his being particularly clever or adept; bravery and brute force are the only attributes extolled here. He kills a boar, a shark, and most ludicrously, a giant octopus capable of grabbing him by the waist, not through clever stratagems, but simply by standing his ground and stabbing them. Admirable, perhaps, but not exactly thrilling plots. Certainly, Sperry means well, and he’s good at describing this Adventure Story For Eager Lads, but I question the book’s underlying message, and its one-note hero, as a model for young minds.
—Ensiform
Call It Courage is a good book about a boy who faces his fears in the form of his peers, family, and nature.The hero of the book lost his mother in a stormy wave out at sea and ever since has feared the sea as if it was wanting to take him as well.His tribe mates make fun of him, his father is somewhat ashamed of him, and he his only friends are a dog and a bird he nursed as a baby.When all boys in the tribe go out to the sea, Mafatu builds up the courage to join them. In going, he gets caught in storm and is pushed miles from his home island to an uninhabited island where learns what he is made of.The trouble now is that he has to find shelter, food, and a way back home across the sea.
—Andy Lee