would later judge himself harshly for. He and his companions would sometimes go out searching for small animals to torment and kill. One experience in particular haunted him as an adult. An owl, sleeping in a rock crevasse was discovered during one of his forays into the wilderness. The boys killed it and cut off its legs in order to pull on the tendons and force the claws to contract. "To this day, indeed this very minute, I remember these depredations with horror."(Commire 114)
             Drawing from this accumulated wealth of youthful adventure and misadventure O'Dell published his first historical novel for children, Island of the Blue Dolphins, in 1960. His story was based on a local legend of the "Lost Woman of San Nicholas Island," who was rescued from twenty years of isolation off the coast of Santa Barbara in 1858 (Scribner's). The central character of O'Dell's novel, Karana, also spends several years of isolation living off of an island's resources and the sea. Through Karana, O'Dell revealed his own intimate knowledge of local ecology and finds expression for personal memories containing both joy and sorrow. His observations as a child became her observations.
             The description of the "island" where Karana is stranded, physically mirr
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