The Cay (The Cay, #1)

The Cay (The Cay #1)

3.66 of 5 stars 3.66  ·  rating details  ·  13,322 ratings  ·  1,317 reviews
Phillip is excited when the Germans invade the small island of Curaçao. War has always been a game to him, and he’s eager to glimpse it firsthand–until the freighter he and his mother are traveling to the United States on is torpedoed.

When Phillip comes to, he is on a small raft in the middle of the sea. Besides Stew Cat, his only companion is an old West Indian, Timothy....more
Paperback, 144 pages
Published April 8th 2003 by Laurel Leaf (first published 1969)
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Helen Pontak
Sep 26, 2007 Helen Pontak rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Adventure loving people
The Cay is a book about a boy named Phillip Enright living in the time of a world war II (1942). When German U-boats surround the island of Curacao, his mother who is frightened wants to go back to the Netherlands and take her son with her. Her husband who has to work was not able to leave, Phillips mother complained and eventually won the argument. Phillip and his mother say goodbye to Phillips father and they sail away on a ship. The ship becomes shipwrecked and Phillip and his mother get thro...more
Abbey Cupcake
It was good but in some parts it was sad
Ian Mclean
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
Jen
May 18, 2008 Jen rated it 4 of 5 stars
Recommended to Jen by: D'Ette Marceaux
D'Ette had to read this book for school and she loved it. She asked me if I would also read it.

It's a children's book, so it doesn't take long to read. I read the whole thing in about two hours.

It's easy to see why the book won literary awards and was made into a movie. It's a great story, told from the point-of-view of 12-year-old Philip, who gets lost at sea with a black man after the boat he is traveling in with his mother is attacked by Germans. Philip loses his sight and is forced to learn...more
Mary Grace
This is the best book eva!!!!! It is so sweet! I cried my eyes out at the end though!
The Insane Psychopath Jane Volturi
This book is...amazing. It makes you think of so many things. It makes you realize what truly is wrong with the world, and how messed up it was before.
Daniel Prince
It starts with Philip, a twelve year old American child living on Curacao, an Island off of Venezuela. Philip is stuck in the middle of a war. His mother tries to take him back to America where Philip will be safe. Instead, his means of escape, a boat, is torpedoed. Philip suffers a hit to the head and is knocked unconscious. When he awakes, he is on a raft in the middle of the ocean. But he is not alone. He is adrift at sea with a black man named Timothy and Philip does not like his companion....more
Gale
"He had to be Blind to see the Truth"

Young Philip Enright has been raised on the Island of Curacao in the early 40's, the son of an engineer for Royal Dutch Shell. But his laidback, tropical lifestyle is suddenly shattered when German subs blockade the port, then torpedo his escape boat. The ruthless forces of Word War II catapult the boy into a world of danger and darkness, as he regains consciousness upon a raft--his sole companions being a huge Black man and the ship's cat.

Terrified and ham...more
Neil Chambers
This was my second time reading this book, as I did not fully understand it when I first read it years ago. The Cay is about a boy, Phillip Enright, who faces the effects of war in his home country of Curacao. Phillip, despite being very close to the fighting, is not terribly afraid of the war, unlike his mother, who has a strained relationship with Phillip. Phillip's mother, sensing the nearing danger, decides to take Phillip with her on a trip to the United States to escape World War II. The s...more
Brendan Rodriguez
The Cay is Theodore Taylor’s epic tale of eleven-year-old boy Phillip Enright’s haphazard adventure on a small, uncivilized cay on the Caribbean Sea. The story takes place during 1942, a dangerous wartime; World War II is in full swing, and trepidation is at an all-time high. Phillip’s father has moved himself and his family to the Caribbean island of Curacao from the American state of Virginia to work at an oil refinery there. The area is soon infested with German submarine-presence, causing gr...more
Bob Berkshire
The Cay is a strong book, especially for its reading level.

The book consists of two very different people. There is Phillip, a young boy who is trying to leave Curacao with his mother when the Germans attack, being eager to see War first hand since he just considers it a game. The other is an old West Indian by the name of Timothy, who isn't very well educated, and is first looked down upon since he is black. When the freighter that Phillip and his mom gets attacked, Phillip wakes up on a raft,...more
William Rocha
The Cay starts off when the main character,Philip,is fleeing his home island to Netherlands because German warships surrounded the island. Him and His mother flee but his dad must stay due to his work. The ship they are fleeing on is torpedoed and everyone parishes except Phillip, the ship cat, and a foreign Chef named Timothy. First Philip is distant of Timothy but his head injury makes him more progressively blind everyday until he goes completely blind a few days after the crash, and he becom...more
Kathy
The Cay
Reviewed by Ella Mylod

There is a boy named Philip. It is 1942 and world war II is just starting. Philip and his parents live on an island called Curacao. Philip and his dad have a close relationship but his mom racist. Philip has a friend named Henrik, his classmate. There are German submarines surrounding the island which causes the islanders trouble. Philip’s mom wants to go back to Virginia, where they are originally from. His mom decides to take Philip with her. They boarded a ship ca...more
Karen Peters
The Cay by Theodore Taylor is a work of historical fiction intended for the Intermediate(I)/Advanced(A) age reading group. The Cay received the Jane Addams Children's Book Award in 1970, but following criticism, in 1976 the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom asked the author to return the award. This novel was dedicated to Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Cay is a story of survival, friendship, and sacrifice. Phillip Enright is an eleven year old boy who lives on the island of Curacao...more
Annie McMahon
Positive Points
This book has an interesting, unique plot. A boy becomes blind after getting stranded on an island with an old man called Timothy and a cat. Their friendship grows based on their need to survive in the wild.

I really loved the old man's personality. Instead of pitying the blind boy, he challenged him to overcome his situation and take charge of himself. Both characters were believable and unique in many ways.

Negative Points
The beginning didn't really hook me. I was about to put the...more
Jessica
I would highly recommend this book for older children because of the intense themes it covers. This book teaches the importance of not judging people by what they look like, how old they are, or where they come from through the unlikely friendship Phillip forms with Timothy. It also makes a statement about racial equality and how it really does not matter what color skin a person has. Most importantly, this book teaches the importance of friendship and how it can get you through any situation, n...more
K.
Jul 04, 2012 K. rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: shipwreck theme lovers, anyone
Contender 12/13 read aloud.

Heard raves about this book from diverse people. I really liked it, but not as much as I thought I would. That's not to say it's not worth reading, or sharing with your kids, because it is. I was just a little let down after hearing hype.

One thing I can really appreciate is the way the author made the characters real, 3D, not just one sided "good" or "bad" or even in the middle. They worked & acted like real people. Philip was a lame whiner at times. Timothy was...more
Sophie Schiller
I'll never forget the day (1975) my fourth grade class in St. Thomas discovered this book on our library shelves. One look at the cover and we all fought over it tooth and nail. Over the next several weeks, this was the most checked-out book in the school library. And for good reason. The protagonist, Phillip, was easily-relatable, and Timothy, the aged deckhand from Charlotte Amalie who saves his life, could have been any one of a number of old men we saw sitting around Emancipation Park, or ov...more
Jacob
This book, while short, encompasses a variety of morals. Perhaps because of this, I felt like I wasn't reading a fictional book so much as taking a lesson in ethics. While the morals were important ones to learn (don't judge a book by it's cover being an important one), I feel the book would have been a lot more entertaining if they weren't crammed in as well.

Another complaint I have about this book is that the main character is extremely whiny and hard to relate to for over half the book. Whil...more
Narek Mughnetsyan
I chose the book The Cay because I had already read it in sixth grade and always had wanted to read it again and now I truly realized that it was a great book and I loved it. The book is about Philip and Timothy, a young white boy and a seventy year old black man during WWII. During the story Phillip is blinded and has to live like that throughout most of the book and he and Timothy are stuck on an inhabited island and they have to cope with each other with racism and blindness. My favorite quot...more
Tyler
When the book was based there was a war happening in the waters of the Caribbean islands on one island called curaco had a war happening around it it was a very racist island to. Phillip is living a normal life through the war, when one night his parents were talking about how Phillip and his mum should leave the island. While Phillip was on this trip he got hit by an enemy submarine and had to evacuate they both got separated, and Philip got knocked out. When Philip woke up he found himself wit...more
James Gabriel
an amazing and emotional book with drama, pain and sadness. its about a boy who was growing up in a time of war but thinking that it wasn't going to effect their small island in the Carribian but a nazi submarine starts to bomb the boats in the small town scared his mother and him self tries to flee but their boat gets bombed and he gets hit in the back of the head when they try to escape from the sinking ship he wakes up to find a black man sitting next to him on a small raft they float for day...more
Cole Ordiway
The Cay
By Theodore Taylor


The Cay by Theodore Taylor takes place in 1942 on an abandon island in the middle of the Caribbean with the two main characters, Phillip and Timothy, stranded on the island after a fatal shipwreck. Phillip is only 12 years old and he wakes up after being unconscious to find that he was stranded on the deserted island with a 70 year old man named Timothy and his cat, Stew. Phillip ends up waking up the next day to find that he was hit on the head during shipwreck and cau...more
07rosalynr
I love this book so much! It's amazing! It gets very intense! The island is being followed by the German submarines. That are trying to target the oil refineries and tanks. A boy named Phillip is on that island with his mother and father. His father, who works at a refinery, who is closer with Phillip than he is with his mother, who is racist very protective over Phillip. Which may be why Phillip isn't close to her. Phillips mom wants to go back to Virginia with her son. The Dad refuses and so d...more
Owen
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
Jack

"Phillip is excited when the Germans invade the small island of Curaçao. War has always been a game to him, and he’s eager to glimpse it firsthand–until the freighter he and his mother are traveling to the United States on is torpedoed. When Phillip comes to, he is on a small raft in the middle of the sea. Besides Stew Cat, his only companion is an old West Indian, Timothy. Phillip remembers his mother’s warning about black people: 'They are different, and they live differently.' But by the time...more
Patrick
I thought that this book was a action and adventure excellence. While reading this book I realized skin color does not matter at all. The bond that Timothy and Phillip develop is a heart warming friendship. This story was about a ship wreck that brought two different types of people with two very different lives together. I would recommend this book to anybody. All ages would enjoy the crazy adventure Phillip over comes in life. He finds out that black people are nicer than he thought and are sm...more
Alex Baugh
Living on the Dutch island of Curacao, off the coast of Venezuela, 11 year old Phillip Enright thinks it is very exciting when the World War II finally arrives there in February 1942. Packs of German U-Boats start blowing up the island’s oil refineries and sinking ships carrying much needed oil to England. Then he and his friend Henrik witness a ship hit by a torpedo and watch as it burns and sinks with not survivors. Frightened but curious, Phillip tries to talk to his dad about the war, but hi...more
Nicola
Reason for Reading: This is another book from the Randomly Selected Bookshelf that I am reading from this year. I'm pretty sure I've read this before but it must have been as a kid, because I didn't really remember the story. My son loves shipwreck/survival stories so this one will definitely be going in the bedtime reading pile for his dad to read to him.

Phillip is twelve and lives in the West Indies, has ever since he was four, on the island of Curacao. World War II is in full swing, the year...more
Marie Anderson
The Cay is a children’s novel written by Theodore Taylor. It was published in 1969 and the main theme is survival. Phillip is a twelve-year-old boy who lives on an island off of Venezuela. As the war worsens, his mother wants to escape back to America so they will be safer. However, the shipwrecks and he ends up on a raft in the middle of the ocean with an old black man named Timothy. Timothy and Phillip’s relationship starts off badly but when Phillip becomes completely blind from getting hit w...more
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Ica’s Book Club: First Book: The Cay! 27 14 3 hours, 25 min ago  
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To all who have read "The Cay" as a class assignment: Do you like it? Did you like it? Will you like it? 4 19 Oct 27, 2011 05:44pm  
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