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Swiss Family Robinson, The (A Graphic Novel Audio): Illustrated Classics
Unavailable
Swiss Family Robinson, The (A Graphic Novel Audio): Illustrated Classics
Unavailable
Swiss Family Robinson, The (A Graphic Novel Audio): Illustrated Classics
Audiobook46 minutes

Swiss Family Robinson, The (A Graphic Novel Audio): Illustrated Classics

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

3/5

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About this audiobook

What if you and your family were marooned on a desert island? Would you be able to survive? This is a story of the Robinson family. Learn how they used materials from the shipwreck, their resourcefulness, good humor, and hard work to build a good life. Did they ever get rescued?
LanguageEnglish
Release dateJan 1, 2006
ISBN9781612474571
Unavailable
Swiss Family Robinson, The (A Graphic Novel Audio): Illustrated Classics
Author

Johann David Wyss

Johann David Wyss was a Swiss writer best known for his children’s classic The Swiss Family Robinson. A pastor in Bern, Switzerland, Wyss’s writing was influenced by his four sons, and was intended to serve as a moral guide for self-reliance, farming, cooperation, and frugality. Wyss died in 1818 at the age of 74, six years after the publication of The Swiss Family Robinson.

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Reviews for Swiss Family Robinson, The (A Graphic Novel Audio)

Rating: 3.1923076923076925 out of 5 stars
3/5

26 ratings29 reviews

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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I must have watched the 1960 Disney movie of this book dozens of times when I was growing up. Obviously that colored my reading and when I came across some major differences between the book and movie I was a little surprised. They left out one of the sons, there is no showdown with pirates, and the character of Roberta was completely created for the film. Regardless, The book is a lot of fun, but it’s a very different story from the one I was expecting. The Robinson family is shipwrecked on their way to Australia. They survive and begin to build a life for themselves on the island that they christen “New Switzerland”. Over the course of a few years the family builds a home and learns how to make do in their new world. In addition to the parents, there are four boys: Sons: Fritz, Ernest, Jack, and Franz. The family’s father teaches survival lessons, like hunting and gathering, but he also teaches his children how to live well. He has a ridiculously diverse knowledge of plants and animals, which at times seemed a bit unlikely. I love that even though they are stranded on a desert island, they work so hard to continue to learn. They are all practicing different languages, studying new sciences, exploring, getting exercise. Their priorities didn’t change. Their father still has the whole family work together and treat each other with civility and respect. He instructs them in everything and they support and encourage one another. I kept wondering what would happen to a family today if they were stranded and couldn’t use their cell phones. Would they even know how to open a coconut? I kept thinking of Lost, the modern day equivalent of this adventure in some ways. I think a lot of people wouldn’t know how to survive for more than a few days. There’s one terrifying scene that will stay with me for a long time, it includes a donkey and boa constrictor and that’s all I’ll say. A few of the other scenes where animals are killed aren’t pleasant to read, but they certainly aren’t gratuitous. Each one takes place because they need to survive, not for sport.BOTTOM LINE: I think this one would be perfect to read aloud to boys. It’s all adventure and learning how to hunt and survive, but the moral lessons about treating animals fairly and hard work give it an added weight.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This book is about a family who gets shipwrecked. They take refuge on the shore of an island and hope someone comes to rescue them. Eventually they decide to begin making a home for themselves. The boys help their father create an amazing tree house. The family spends their days adventuring around the island and their nights playing music and dancing! The littlest brother is my favorite because he likes to catch and train wild animals on the island. The older brothers go off to explore the other part of the island and end up saving a girl (who they think is a boy at first). The brothers vie for her attention and both develop crushes on her. In the end they are rescued by the girls grandfather, but all but one brother choses to stay on the island and continue living the dream life!
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    My memories of this story came from the Disney movie. So I noticed the differences. Disney reduce the number of sons to three. In the book they have 4 sons. The later half is quite different from the movie.I was surprised by how violent the boys were toward the animals they met. How they would "punish" an animal. The father really disliked his son Ernest. Ernest was a thinker and more serious not as inclined to physical action, so the father dismissed him as lazy. It made me uncomfortable how the mother wanted then to stay with her. She dreaded her son's going off and having their own lives.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    3.5 starsThis is the story of the family (mom, dad, and four boys) who were shipwrecked on a deserted island and how they managed to survive. It was entertaining, but not believable. The father knew everything about everything, and pretty much everything went right. Every animal they came across they were able to kill or capture for some kind of use – food, eggs, pets, or something else. Not only that, there was quite an international variety of plants and animals: hyena, ostrich, kangaroo, lion, penguin, walrus, boa, pineapple and much more... Overall, I thought it was still enjoyable, but one has to be able to suspend reality. I did (mostly) like the ending.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    I love the good classics. For example we have all books in the Anne of Green Gables series. They are obviously written in a different time and in a style that was common then: lots of description and day-to-day happenings without a strong plot. But these books give a beautiful and interesting flavour of times past.This book, however... I completely fail to understand why this ever became a classic.It starts well, but soon the book gets bogged in chapter after chapter of problems too easily solved, self-righteous preaching and family wholesomeness that I find unbelievable. In addition to this, the author appears not to have had one ounce of knowledge regarding the world's geography, climate and plant species.If you want to read classics to your kids, find something else.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    A story about a family sentenced to live in a paradise of raw materials and quality tools where they enjoy near-constant divine intervention on their behalf. There's no tension or depth in the book, just an inventory of their industry, consumption, and slaughter.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Nowadays, a work such as The Swiss Family Robinson would be considered an unacceptable rip-off of Robinson Crusoe. What is puzzling still is what lends it the status of a classic, if not its apparently staggering sales.Devoid of originality, what more (except for sales) does a book need to become a classic. Presently, both Robinson Crusoe and The Swiss Family Robinson are mainly read, whether or not in adapted editions as children's books. The latter was intended to be a book for children, while the former was not. It is difficult to assess whether youth would consider Defoe's novel distressing or difficult to understand.From a pedagogical point of view, that is to say, children would probably learn more words and concepts from The Swiss Family Robinson as the author deliberately enriched it with vocabulary, referring to various plants and animals, which could not have lived together on a island as described.Where the island of Robinson Crusoe would appear alien and dangerous, the island of The Swiss Family Robinson would seem familiar, surroundings essentially not much different from the reader's home surroundings. Both Robinsons were happy to get shipwrecked with some supplies and tools they could salvage from the wreck, but in the case of the The Swiss Family Robinson they were able to salvage so much and so many essentially luxury items that their experience on the island is not very distressing. The same attention for luxury is expressed in the idea of constructing a spiral staircase in their shelter (p. 162) and preparing a meal of caviare (p. 176).
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A family finds themselves shipwrecked on an island of plenty. They depend on their own hard work and wits to survive. Father is the all knowing leader, the mother a patient hardworking partner, and the four boys each of their quirks. I probably would have enjoyed it more when I was 12 and didn't cringe at some of the archaic language and ideas. Hard to see using it in class, except to hand to a strong reader for a possible challenge book.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I dunno...I know the purpose of the book was to teach kids and people how to survive in the wild, and maybe I'd find it more interesting as an adult, but it was so dry! I liked the movie better :-D
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This 1812 novel was made into a 1960 movie that I remember as being pretty wholesomely Disneyfied. To my amazement, the actual book is equally unrealistically wholesome. The family, consisting of a Swiss mother, father, and four boys, are marooned on an uncharted island following a shipwreck in which they are abandoned by the captain and crew, never to be seen again. They embrace their fate with verve and good cheer, emptying the ship of all useful tools and supplies, and creating a mainly comfortable and well-fed life by dint of hard work and a cheerful outlook. The island must be dozens of square miles, supporting a variety of plants and animals that co-exist nowhere else on earth. There are kangaroos, lions, tigers, bears, buffalo, boa constrictors, ostriches and monkeys. The family has spent at least a decade on the island by the conclusion, never despairing of their fate or their isolation. The conclusion itself, after a decade of isolation in which they are only rarely threatened by the island predators, is in equal measure satisfying and unbelievable.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    It's been a very long time since I read this, but I think I still have my original copy from the Junior Deluxe Editions book club my parents signed me up for. I'm sure I read it more than once, because I have such clear memories of the adventures. I especially loved how they could always find things they needed on the wrecked ship.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    So. A family gets shipwrecked on an island. They happily build some houses, plant food-bearing plants, tame some local animals, and kill one of everything else they see to put in their "museum". The head of the household is a pious man, who luckily seems to know everything about every animal/plant/indigenous custom that ever existed. This father is the narrator of the story. It seems that at every turn there is an opportunity for him to impart some specialised knowledge and moral lesson for his sons. I found him to be stuffy and arrogant, but that was the time I suppose. The only thing saving this story for me was that it was originally a bedtime story told to the authors sons. In that context I can see the fast moving events working, but in the novel form it is repetitive and borderline meaningless
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    As an adult this story is ridiculously irritating.The ship they were shipwrecked from happened to be outfitting a colony and therefore has all the tools and growing crops you could wish for. The island has a good selection of edible plants, trees and animals, as well as running potable water. The family between them can manage everything and know how to do everything they need without having a survival manual to hand.If you can get past all that it's a good and classic novel.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This classic tale of adventure is a perfect story to place in the graphic novel format with it’s exciting story and colourful backdrop. When their ship strikes a reef and they are abandoned by the crew, this family manages to survive the storm and salvage many necessary ingredients to their survival on a isolated tropical island. In fact not only do they survive, they manage to thrive and create a wonderful colony that eventually, when they are discovered, lures more people to join them.With four sons in the family, it is a given that there will be adventures galore. Sharks and jaguars, tree houses and caves, all are drawn in great detail, and this book, originally published in German in 1812 springs to life on these pages.Although simplistic and somewhat abbreviated , this graphic version is a wonderful introduction (or re-visit) to the classic original, especially as it cuts down somewhat on the dated religious views and overly sentimental family values that are strewn throughout the book. Published by Campfire Graphic Novels, this is just one in a large series of classics such as Kim, Prisoner of Zenda, Gulliver’s Travels and many more. Re-visiting the Swiss Family Robinson was a fun way to spend an afternoon.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I remember trying to read this book when I was a child. I didn't enjoy it. I did, however, enjoy the movie better. The story concerns a Swiss family's adventure in the South Pacific after being shipwrecked. It's a story of survival. After seeing another person's review here on LibraryThing, I decided to revisit the book to see if my adult tastes in reading made a difference in my like/dislike of the book. Unfortunately I found that the book had not aged well, even though it is considered a classic. It's one of the few books which fall into the category, "Skip the book; watch the movie instead."
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    The Swiss Family Robinson, first published in 1812, is considered a staple of children's adventure fiction. Somehow I must have missed it growing up, and unfortunately it wasn't the fun read I was expecting. It was—dare I admit it?—rather boring. I was expecting adventure; what I got was a list of inventions and how they were invented. After awhile I grew tired of the descriptions of plants and their uses, the narrator's random useful knowledge and ingenuity, the details of every innovation, the management of their various homes and outposts, etc. And where, oh where are the pirates?This is, of course, one of the more successful imitators of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, and it's fun to think of Johann Wyss's children gathering around him to listen to the adventures of the Swiss Robinsons. And it did inspire the old Disney movie, which is an utterly ridiculous and lovable film. I appreciated Wyss's deliberate inclusion of moral lessons, though I might approach things a bit differently than the narrator with my own children. Despite the general fact-reporting style of the narrative, there are a few humorous bits, like this wry observation:I constructed a couple of hen-coops, too, for the hens and their little chicks which we had brought from Woodlands, for I knew that if I left them unprotected, the inquisitive dispositions of Knips and Fangs might induce them to make anatomical experiments which would be detrimental to welfare of the youngsters. (300)The edition I read from Puffin is the most popular English translation by W. H. G. Kingston, and I didn't find it particularly well done. Misplaced modifiers, comma splices, and other such failings are the order of the day. I found this copy secondhand and it has its own little history, I think. The inside cover is inscribed to "Zoë" from "Papa" for Christmas 2004. I can't help but imagine some fond grandfather giving his granddaughter a book he loved and hoping that she would enjoy it just as he had. Well, it's a paperback and didn't show any signs of ever having been read when I bought it. I hope Papa never found out. Though I can't say I really blame Zoë, either. Disappointing.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The Robinson Family, are shipwrecked on a tropical island for over 10 years. They survive because the father knows NEARLY everything related to science, botany, animal husbandry, farming, carpentry, parenting, marriage, and more, and because they managed to salvage most of the useful items from the ship, i.e. lanterns, silverware, dishes, tools, wood, barrels, books, as well as the animals on board.They explore the island, find plenty of plants and trees that can be used, and begin building a number of homesteads as well as defense barriers. They hunt to eat, but also capture native animals to tame and use for heavier work. They plant and harvest, repair and improve, and beautify until the island truly is New Switzerland. Because this was written in the early 1800's specifically for BOYS, the tone is old-fashioned and sexist; the book is filled with moral lessons on co-operating, independence, responsibility, respect for elders, physical prowess belief in G-d, and knowledge of the environment. Surprisingly not boring; the Robinsons navigate from one adventure to the next, celebrate their successes, and love and care for each other.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Written from the perspective of the father, it chronicles the first-hand account of the shipwreck and survival of a Swiss family of six on a remote island somewhere near New Guinea. The family consists of a Swiss pastor who is a walking encyclopedia on agricultural practices from around the world; his wife who excels in equal measure with culinary skills, and four energetic sons. Displaying remarkable resilience and resourcefulness, they survive completely alone for over ten years until their rescue. In the process, they create their own European civilization, showing complete mastery over animals and plants, and creatively establishing houses. The bulk of the novel consists of their struggle for survival with their endless discovery of new species of plants and animals..
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I absolutely loved this book!!! It was difficult to put down therefore this was a "nothing else got done" kinda book. It was wonderful to read about how God came first, as it should be, and how getting back to the basics brings family blessings unmeasurable.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I didn't expect to like this one as much as I did- I thought I'd be bored with it and put off by the fact that an impossible variety of animals and other inaccuracies were coupled with the know-it-all tales of the father. I ended up being fascinated by everything they did. All their adventures, all their creations, everything that made living in the wilderness a civilized and abundant life for them. The ending had some interesting implications- if they indeed started a colony, they wouldn't have the same abundance, but at the same time, they'd have friendship and a future.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This book is about the Robinson family getting stuck on a abanden ship. In the begining of the book the family is on a ship headed to sweden but end up in a bad srorm and crash in to a big rock. The crew abanen them and the father said the ship wont sink fast and they would sleep tell tomarow. In the middle of the book they find saliler also ship reced on the same island as them. At the end of the book the get saved but only the two sons and the sailer who is actuly a girl leave the island why'll their mom, dad, and yunger brother stayes.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I was genuinely surprised at how much I disliked this book. The father was ridiculously knowledgeable and moralistic. Yuck!
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Perhaps their lives would have been even better if they spent less time praying and thanking god. This aspect of the book became very annoying very quickly. The least favorite (for me) of the Robinson-type marooned-on-an-island type books (Defoe, Verne, Etc).
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Swiss Family Robinson is a great family adventure story. Its old but still a great read with lots of action. If you like this definitely try Kidnapped.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The Swiss Family Robinson is about a family that shipwrecks on an Edenlike island. Thier shipwreck and the rest of the crew takes the boats and leave. This book is very interesting, but it gets boring after a while.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I read this aloud to my children and they enjoyed it once the action got going. I think they were a bit credulous at the way the survivors managed so well on the island, yet it was fun to read anyway. Besides, that was one of their favorite places at Disney Land, though I think it has been changed now to something more modern. Loved the discussion in the book of the things seaweed is good for and its various properties.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Loved it as a kid. As a grown up reading it TO my kids, it was a little tedious in places. And I got a kick out of how many different species of animal exists on their little island.Most amusing.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    This is considered a classic, and I liked a lot action and the inventions the family created when they were stranded on the island, but I was not able to keep my disbelief suspended. For example, the father knew every species they came across. I don't believe that anyone in 1800, no matter how well-read he was, would react to every species (both plant and animal) with a spurt of perfect knowledge of that species. Fun book, for the most part.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A little dated, but always a classic.