Note 2: I wrote this during an exam time, when I was looking for any distraction possible. So if you're thinking I have way too much time on my hands, you have a point, but I plead exams. ^_^.

When I was younger I enjoyed Swiss Family Robinson on the Commodore 64. Even at age 7 I was aware that a small desert island boasting potatoes, rice, coconuts, pineapples, sugar cane, cotton, wax, clay, rubber, and a variety of animal life, was quite exceptionally convenient - probably a construct of the game designer just to make the task of getting food less tedious and uniform.

Then I read the book, and laughed.

I knew that Swiss Family Robinson was a children's classic; I had not anticipated that it was a comedy. By chapter 4, I became slightly incredulous at all the new things they were discovering - but as they kept piling innovation on innovation I soon read with mounting amusement, reading out the latest discovery to my mother who commented that, verily, this was a magical fantasy island.

This book is not just a story but actually a handy guide on how to survive on a desert island. It does, however, assume that your desert island will contain approximately 3000 varieties of plant and animal species. Assuming this, you will know not only how to find sufficient food to live, but how to create every one of your modern conveniences from scratch.

The second chapter is entitled 'A desolate island'. This somehow conjures up an image of barrenness Being stranded on a desolate island in the middle of nowhere turns out to be a mighty convenient thing; truly this is a family on whom Providence smiles. They live in harmonic bliss for ten years without incident or serious illness, and every experiment they make succeeds, from making bread out of manioc roots, to getting all their livestock to shore by tying buoyant barrels to them, to taming an onager which is said to be 'beyond the power of man to tame' (but of course, nothing is beyond the power of the illustrious Robinsons). They even find (and kill, of course) during one of their hunting parties, a duck-billed platypus - what a pleasing fiction to find and secure one of nature's most rare and timid animals!

Fortunately, the shipwrecked ship remains intact for long enough for them to remove almost everything from it, including numerous farm animals, seeds for planting their own vegetables and orchard, a nice boat, plentiful gunpowder for the most trigger-happy boys (fortunately, the children have been trained in use of firearms from a young age) and everything else needful.

Fortunately, there is always a member of the family who knows what to do with the most obscure plant or tree, whether making ambrosia jelly from seaweed or killing a peccary in the right way to avoid poisoning.

Fortunately, nobody ever gets salmonella or obtains any injury whatsoever in all the encounters with fierce wild animals.

Fortunately, the magic island they find themselves on is uninhabited and when a ship finally comes it is friendly.

Truly this is a remarkable family!

And what a remarkable island! While an island in the tropics, it brings together, so it seems, all the animals of the world - African (flamingos, baboons, jackals, ostriches, elephants, antelopes), North American (buffalo, wolves, bears, bullfrogs), South American (peccaries, agouti, boa constrictors, capybaras), Oceanic (coconut crabs, penguins, seals, whales, sharks, mussels) and Australian (kangaroos, black swans, duck-billed platypi!).

It also contains a dazzling variety of plantlife, many of which the family recognise and know just how to prepare and make use of. From this florae, the resourceful Robinsons are able to obtain/produce aloe, bowls, spoons, bottles, ladders, arrows, baskets, cages, thread, salve, tinder, fish bait, a sledge, a house and bridge, bread, extra water supplies, aromatic candles, cotton, rubber, boots, shoes, waterproofing, bird lime, troughs, clothes, turpentine, tar, a boat, dye and jelly.

There is also abundant salt and gravel, gypsum from which they make plaster, fuller's earth from which they make soap, clay from which they make crockery...

Every animal is edible and tastes good, but if they don't feel like meat (or fish - trout, salmon and sturgeons, for example?), the family can munch on sugar cane, potatoes, cabbage palm, rice, coconuts, figs, pineapples, peas, or recourse to one of the many fruit or vegetables they have successfully brought in from the ship and cultivated. These meals can be flavoured with jasmine, vanilla, honey, pepper or salt.

In chapter three the father warns his son: "never take the life of any animal needlessly." Throughout the tale the family then succeeds in killing no fewer than 42 different types of animal.

List of animals on and immediately surrounding this island:
flamingoes
penguins
lobsters
oysters
mussels
agouti
monkeys
jackals
sharks
turtles
bustards (large birds)
crabs
gulls
crawfish
porcupines
thrushes
ortolans (doves)
salmon
kangaroos
coconut crabs
maggots (edible)
buffaloes
eagles
bees
grouse
herrings
misc fish
trouts
sturgeons
black swans
dog fish
pigeons
apes
whales
shellfish
boa constrictors
eels
capybaras
beaver rats
peccaries
ostriches
mud tortoises
antelopes
bears
condors
buzzards
rabbits
cuckoos
hares
muskrats
duck-billed platypi
walruses
hyenae
lions
elephants
baboons
bullfrogs
seals
sea bears
oysters
wolves

A nearby island also has boars, deer, albatrosses, tigers and parrots.

The characters also have well-developed personalities:
-Fritz is the manly one
-Jack is the bold, impulsive one
-Ernest is the lazy, smart one
-Franz is the little one

The adventures begin to wear a little thin after the second or third time. Many of their adventures consist of meeting a wild animal and shooting it. Sometimes their dogs get involved and prevent them from being able to shoot it right away. That's about the extent of the variety.

After chapters and chapters of unvarying tedium, the story suddenly takes a dramatic turn and half a dozen things happen all at once in a short time - they meet Jenny, they meet a passing ship, some of them leave the island, etc. Of course, when they actually have the opportunity to leave the island, most of them decide not to do so - why leave the protective shores of the Magical Island of Invincibility after all?

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