Can the SDMB help me find a particular island

Factual Questions
1

OK, this may be a hopeless cause, but at least let me try if the Dopers can help me. Based on the barest of recollections, I want to find the identity of an island, where it is, and what nation its a part of.

When I was in the 4th grade, my geography book had chapters focusing on kids around the world. Chapter one was a boy and a girl who lived on a tiny Pacific Island village with their parents. They went to school if they felt like it, and otherwise did stereotypical Pacific islander things.

The main island, with the village, school, and other homey comforts may have been called Moloki, or something that began with M, or I may be remembering wrong. It may have had a curved shape. Across the shallow, blue lagoon, was Coconut island, it may also have been oblong or curved. Here only coconut trees grew. The kids could go there alone via outrigger canoe, and gather coconuts, to be dried into copra, or as a source of fiber for rope or weaving. I got the impression copra was the islanders main cash crop.

Perpendicular to the pair of islands, Home and Coconut, was Taro Island. It was a greater distance across a deeper lagoon that required a parent to go with the children in the canoe. This island was larger than the others, and more circular. Like the name, the only thing here was taro plants, gathered for special occasions.

All three islands were surrounded by a coral reef. This was essentially their entire world, no other island was mentioned as a place they could go to. A large ship came from time to time, to buy copra and sell metal items, but no mention (IIRC) of what nation it was from. Maybe the textbook mentioned that, from time to time, some people left the island when they grew up, but not where they went.

Do I have any hope of finding out where this island is?

2

it is fictional. Ask the author.

3

Sorry to be so snarky. You might check the Library of Congress for American Historical Stories for Children. You will need to be more specific, and be sure to add a date range into your search.

Why do I hear the lyrics “Put the lime in the coconut…” right now :smiley:

4

It doesn’t sound like it’s meant to be any particular island, just a generic South Pacific locale. Certainly the names of Coconut and Taro islands are fictional.

5

There’s a Taro Island in the Solomon chain, which would fit the South Pacific theme. For everything else, though, you’re on your own.

6

Taro requires large amounts of fresh water - so this description of it growing as the lone crop on an island is likely fictional.

7

There’s a Home Island in the Cocos (Keeling) Islands.

There’s a Taro Island in the Solomons.

Those island groups are literally on opposite sides of Australia: The Solomons are to the northeast, the Cocos to the northwest.

Moloki sounds like Molokai, which is in Hawaii. That’s in yet a third completely different geographic region, even if it, too, is in the Pacific Ocean.

None of this adds up to anything other than a standard fantasy set in The Beautiful South Pacific, star of stage and screen.

8

Yes. In our dreams and we are booking tickets to get there. :smiley:

9

Known among other things for having held the local leper’s colony. I imagine a children’t book wouldn’t mention that detail unless it was about Father Damian or Mother Marianne, both of whom are canonized as saints for the work they did there.

10

The OP doesn’t say that one of the islands is named “Home,” that’s just how he refers to Moloki (or whatever it was) since the village is there.

11

Well, I at least suspected it was a fictional setup. It does seem weird to isolate crops on distant islands like that – maybe they need no care? And if everyone lives in one village, food theft isn’t a likely problem?

I haven’t heard since then of people living so isolated. The circular coral reef isolated their whole world. No big island, no mainland, no capital. Even places like Pitcairn Island, or Tristian de Chuna (Atlantic, I know) are less isolated.

At least now. I can’t even remember good photos. Only distant shots of the village. The photo that sticks out most was a close up of outrigger canoe construction, a couple of men used 2" metal screws to construct it, out of basically local materials otherwise. So that’s the sort of trade they needed.

12

Maybe it was one of the Cook Islands.

13

Did their names happen to be Obet and Kara (sp?)? If so, we had the same book! Here is what I could find via Google: http://books.google.com/books/about/Lands_and_Peoples_of_the_World.html?id=NvQNAQAAIAAJ

No idea how or why I remember that…

14

I thought of Molokai when I read the OP. If the kids were residents of the leper colony, that could explain why they would not be allowed to leave the area without permission. Perhaps Coconut island was a small sandbar island or something that wasn’t big enough to have a population or something, and was just off shore.

Keep in mind that Hawaii is not technically “South Pacific”. It has strong cultural and linguistic ties to several South Pacific nations such as Samoa and New Zealand, but it is technically located north of the equator.

15

I can’t think of any reason why you would want to confine taro cultivation to an island far from people’s houses. Planting and harvesting would certainly be easier near the village. Taro does require particular conditions for growth, in particular fresh or at least brackish water, so I suppose that might be confined to the largest island in the group. However, I don’t know why you wouldn’t just move the village to where the crops are.

16

tallcoldone: you sir, (madam? Straight doper?) have found my 4th grade text book. I never remembered their names, but using “obet and kara” I do get the story I remembered – tossing a ball back and forth, deciding, “Yes I’ll go to school today” “Then I will too” And the rest of the book matches what I remembered: kids in the Ecuadorian village. I had completely forgotten the story from the Tundra, and now its all flooding back.

17

Not at all. Circular coral reefs surrounding Pacific Islands are dime a dozen and they don’t isolate the inhabitants to any significant degree. The reefs have breaks in them and can typically be navigated particularly at high tide. Also, the reefs create a calm lagoon around the island which acts as a natural harbour. Further, such islands typically come in chains such that they are not normally too far from other similar islands.

By way of contrast, Pitcairn and Easter islands are far, far more isolated. And Pitcairn is notoriously difficult to access because it has no harbour and the ocean swells meet the steep and rocky shore directly.

18

Wow, what a one in a million answer!

At tallcoldone’s link, you can search inside the book but it only gives minimal results. I tried a bunch of terms but didn’t get anything interesting except when I search “pacific”, one result is the index at the end of the book where it says: “Kara, a girl on a Pacific Island 1-26” so, my guess is that it’s a fictional Pacific Island.

I was looking for more info about the book and can’t find it for sale anywhere, but
this page lists 7 libraries in the USA that have it. Maybe one is near you.

19

In less than 17 hours. This has got to be the best BBS in the world.

20

Tristan da Cunha, please.