Following a wild and raging storm, the Swiss family Robinson are stranded at sea. But the thundering waves have swept them off to a tropical island, where a new life awaits them. Their ship is laden with supplies and the island is packed with treasures, so they soon adapt and discover new dangers and delights every day...

Bound for Port Jackson, Australia, Father Robinson boards a ship with his wife and their four sons. Little does he know, their lives will never be the same again…
When a violent storm destroys their ship and separates them from the rest of the crew, the Robinson family is stranded on a tropical island in the East Indies. With most of their belongings lost at sea, the only thing they have left is each other.

Using everything they have at their disposal, the Swiss family builds a new life from scratch, taming the wilderness and turning their new home into a hidden paradise away from the rest of the world. But when the world comes to their doorstep, the Robinsons will have to make an impossible choice…
A masterful blend of adventure and family values, The Swiss Family Robinson is a powerful novel about the triumph of human will over nature's obstacles. ( )

It's a very long time since I read it, but from memory it was a rather boring.

By page 74 it was still just a laundry list of each day's discovery of new items from the island, or items recovered from the wrecked ship. No plot, no adventure. This may have passed my standards for a good read (probably not), but the thing that made me press the delete button on the Kindle with particular fury was the way in which Father Robinson was so damn knowledgable about every aspect of "savage" lifestyles and survival tactics. I mean, what middle-class clergyman from the Alps knows the exact proper way to halve a tropical gourd? Is it likely that this late-18th century minister from a mountain climate knows that a particular tree from a tropical climate can be used for making sewing thread, and also exactly how to make a navigable boat out of 8 barrels and a bunch of wrecked plywood? It strained the very limits of my suspended disbelief to the snapping point, and snap they did.

Delete from Kindle. ( )

Abridged to 190 pages