The Doll family has an island adventure in the early Newbery Honor book Floating Island by Ann Parrish (published 1930). Mr. Doll, Mrs. Doll, their three children, their doll house, and Dinah (their Black cook) are shipwrecked as they are enroute to a child. With the shipwreck, sister Annabel and Dinah have been separated from the rest of the family. Floating Island (which is what Mr. Doll calls the island) is a jungle paradise and the reader experiences it from the perspective of these little dolls, who encounter the plants and creatures that live on the island. Dinah is even rescued from the sea! The Dolls meet crabs and tigers and birds and snails and bugs of all kinds!
The book is amusing, but the racial stereotype of Dinah (among other racist comments) make it a not-appropriate book for today’s children. Beyond that, the author’s writing condescends to the young reader, and lengthy asides complicate what could be a simple story. The author is familiar with young children, but she treats the reader as a reader, rather than telling a story simply for entertainment’s sake. Floating Island is not a narrative, in other words. It just feels off.
I can see how Floating Island stood out as a remarkable book for children in 1931, thus garnering a Newbery Honor. However, there are so many dolls-to-life stories now that I’d recommend those to a child today, including the obvious Toy Story.
The Doll People by Ann M. Martin, for example, is highly influenced by this particular story. In that book, the dolls are alive after the children leave and they go on an adventure in the house looking for their long lost aunt. (I believe it is strongly influenced or inspired by Floating Island by the simple fact that the youngest doll in The Doll People is named Annabel, just like our young doll in Floating Island. I could be wrong, but that is one very strong coincidence if not.)
I suspect Martin wished for an updated version of doll adventure much as I did upon finishing Floating Island. The difference is Martin exceeds expectations for an engaging narrative; Parrish’s original offering fails to stand up to today’s children’s literature quality.
