Abel's Island by William Steig
"Abel's Island" is a children's novel by William Steig that tells the story of Abel, a mouse who is separated from his wife, Amanda, during a storm while on a picnic. After the storm capsizes his makeshift raft, Abel finds himself stranded on a remote island, where he must confront both the challenges of survival and his own inner struggles. Initially hopeful for rescue, Abel soon realizes he must rely on his resourcefulness to escape. As he learns to adapt to his environment, he begins to take pride in his ability to provide for himself, experimenting with natural materials to create shelter and clothing.
Throughout the changing seasons, Abel's experiences deepen his understanding of nature and his own capabilities. He faces loneliness during a harsh winter but finds companionship and inspiration in an unexpected friendship with an elderly frog named Gower Glackens. This relationship fosters Abel's artistic side, leading him to create sculptures and discover his passion for creative expression. Ultimately, after a year on the island, Abel makes the courageous decision to return home, embracing the skills and self-confidence he has developed. Steig's narrative, complemented by his own illustrations, encapsulates themes of resilience, transformation, and the profound connections between characters and their environments.
Subject Terms
Abel's Island by William Steig
First published: 1976; illustrated
Subjects: Arts, friendship, love and romance, and nature
Type of work: Novel
Type of plot: Adventure tale and fantasy
Time of work: From August, 1907, to August, 1908
Recommended Ages: 10-13
Locale: An uninhabited island
Principal Characters:
Abel (Abelard Hassam di Chirico Flint) , a wealthy Edwardian mouse who, stranded by flood waters, is left to survive alone on a small island for a yearAmanda , his newlywed wife, who waits for him at homeGower Glackens , an elderly frog who becomes Abel’s companion when he, too, is trapped on the island for a few months
Form and Content
Like Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719) and Scott O’Dell’s Island of the Blue Dolphins (1960), William Steig’s Abel’s Island takes on the challenges of the survival story. The protagonist’s isolation throughout most of the novel prevents reliance on the standard narrative building blocks of dialogue and character interaction. Instead, Steig makes his mouse hero’s solitary musings and his conflicts both with nature and himself the central focus.
One afternoon in August, 1907, newlyweds Abel and Amanda leave their comfortable home in Mossville for a picnic outing. When a violent storm arises, they find shelter in a cave until Abel recklessly pursues Amanda’s windblown scarf. Buffeted by torrential rains, Abel clutches desperately at a rusty nail in a board until this makeshift raft comes to rest in the branches of a birch tree on a small river island.
At first, Abel believes his family will mount a search party to rescue him. When he realizes that he must save himself, he makes many ingenious but unsuccessful attempts at escape: adapting a rudder to his nail-and-board boat, engineering another boat of driftwood and bark, lashing together twigs to make a catamaran, flinging a woven grass rope across the river with his suspenders as a slingshot, and building a bridge of stepping stones.
By September, Abel accepts that he is an inhabitant of the island and takes pride in providing for his needs. He experiments with different natural foods and outfits a hollow log as a snug shelter. As autumn deepens, he diligently stores nuts and seeds, weaves a winter cloak of grass stuffed with milkweed fluff, and insulates his log home. The energy of nature as it prepares for winter spurs him to even greater creativity, and he tries his hand at sculpting clay statues of Amanda and his family. In further exploration of the island, he discovers a human-sized pocket watch and a novel, giving him the rhythmic ticking of the watch and daily-rationed reading of chapters.
The winter months Abel spends miserably in the darkness of his log, waking only long enough to munch a little in his food stores. The depression of this dark time is made worse by the freezing cold and by a predatory owl who returns several times to threaten Abel.
The return of spring is marked not only by a resurgence of energy and joyfulness in Abel but also, amazingly, by the arrival of a visitor, an elderly frog named Gower Glackens who is washed ashore by the rain-choked river. Mouse and frog become fast friends, sharing stories of their families and artistic interests. Abel honors his friend by adding a sculpted likeness of Gower to his collection, and Gower assures Abel that sculpting is surely his vocation.
When Gower leaves the island in mid-June, Abel is more lonely than before. In August, a full year after landing on the island, the drought-diminished river convinces Abel that he now has a chance of crossing it safely. Saying a loving farewell to his statues and to the island that nurtured him, he begins to swim across the stream. Once on shore, an encounter with a cat gives him another chance to prove the survival skills and self-confidence that he has lately acquired. Making his way through Mossville, he spots Amanda sitting alone in a park but decides to continue on and surprise her alone at home. She enters, spots first her restored scarf and then her husband, then melts tearfully into his arms. Steig’s own ink-and-wash illustrations, which have enriched the narrative throughout, are used here instead of words to recount the final touching moments of this tale.
Critical Context
His sophisticated style and thoughtful subject matter have prompted several critics to compare William Steig to E. B. White and Steig’s Abel to White’s Stuart Little. Like White, Steig is famous for a long association with the urbane magazine The New Yorker and for his work for adults, in Steig’s case sardonic line drawings and cartoons. In both cases, the authors have managed to impart the wit and wisdom of their adult work to their children’s writing as well.
Steig is also a brilliant illustrator of his own fiction. He has written many picture books, winning a Caldecott Medal for Sylvester and the Magic Pebble (1969) and the American Book Award for Doctor De Soto (1982). Thoughtful characterization, strong adventure plots, and an ear for the absolutely apt word mark all of Steig’s narratives, short and long. Although magic is frequently the transformative element in picture books such as Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, character transformations occur more naturally and gradually in longer works such as Abel’s Island.
In addition to the motif of transformation, a romance or quest element exists in several of Steig’s creations. Molding his animal characters on such legendary beings as Odysseus or Aeneas, Steig has Abel and the dog protagonist of Dominic (1972) face a series of trials in a hostile world before achieving peace at home; they emerge as both active heroes and contemplative artists.
Finally, Steig underscores the classic quality of his work by adapting traditional narrative forms to his own purposes. Many of his picture books employ folktale motifs, Dominic has been called a picaresque novel, and Abel’s Island is in the tradition of the Robinsonnade or survival story.