The Young Man and the Sea

I always read all of the books on the Rebecca Caudill list when I was in middle school, As I was reading The Old Man and the Sea it felt like I had read a story like that before. I was thinking about it and I realized that in middle school there was a book called The Young Man and the Sea by Rodman Philbrick on the Rebecca Caudill list. The only thing that I remembered from reading it so long ago was the boy in the story was fishing by himself and almost died. Those two facts led my to do some research to see if that book was just a knock off of Hemingway's novel. Apparently it was, although the author says it was just a "homage" (Rockman par 3) to The Old Man and the Sea.

The themes of Hemingway's book are reusable (epic hero-ish characteristics, and the bond between old man and young boy) as Philbrick's book shows. That also shows how timeless and classic The Old Man and the Sea is when it is rewritten into a new book with different characters, but the same basic plot and similar title. If a book can spawn knockoffs then the book has to have been successful. A knockoff book means that someone took the time to get really into a novel and change it enough to make it their own.

In short this post was a slight ramble about knockoffs and the fact that people run out of original material and have to redo older novels. Very few knockoffs are better than the original, but then again the original is the first and always the best. If I read The Old Man and the Sea in middle school instead of The Young Man and the Sea I wouldn't have remembered it years later. The Young Man and the Sea was a nice preview and introduction that was engaging to kids, but it was no substitute for the real thing.

 Rockman, Connie. "The Young Man and the Sea Discussion Guide." Scholastic Teaching Resources. Scholastic. Web. 04 July 2011.