The Cay Themes

Martin Luther King, Jr. had a dream that people would be judged not by the color of their skin, but on the content of their character. Theodore Taylor explores a similar dream in The Cay. He begins...

We're usually friends with people with whom we have things in common: people in our homeroom class, people on our sports team, people who play the same games that we do... But what about people who...

Violence can be defined in a lot of different ways. It can be "an exertion of physical force," like a violent slap on the face; a "destructive action," like a violent storm; or even a "clashing or...

Most children's novels are concerned with the many changes their young protagonists go through, and this book is no different. Phillip, an 11-year-old American kid living in the Caribbean, goes thr...

The natural world is like a diamond – it has many sides. It can be scary (storms and earthquakes), welcoming (a cozy forest bower), inspiring (jaw-dropping mountain view), or isolating (a lonely...

Ever hear the phrase "looks can be deceiving"? On the surface of things, the two main characters of The Cay appear to be very different. Phillip is 11 years old, American, and white. Timothy is ove...

If we were fancy-pants literary critics, we might say that The Cay is a meditation on sacrificial love. What do we mean by that? Well, the novel really wants us to think about what it means to give...

Curaçao is a Dutch-controlled Caribbean island off the coast of Venezuela. Virginia is a state located in the mid-eastern section of the continental United States. Phillip and his family have relo...

Sure they drive us crazy, but our family shapes who we are and how we see the world – especially when we're kids. In The Cay, eleven-year-old Phillip's family has a big influence on him. From his...