Adrift In the Pacific, or Two Years Vacation

To the reader

To the readerMany Robinsons have kept awake the curiosity of our young readers. Daniel Defoe, in his eternal Robinson Crusoe , staged man alone; Wyss, in his Swiss Robinson ,Family; Cooper, in the Crater , the company with its collective components. In Mysterious Island , I put scholars dealing with the necessities of the situation. We imagined yet the Robinson twelve years , the Robinson ice , the Robinson girls , etc.. Despite the countless novels that make up the cycle of Robinsons, it seemed that for the perfect, it remained to show a group of children from eight to thirteen years old, abandoned on an island, struggling for life in the middle passions maintained by the differences of nationality, - in a word, a boarding Robinsons.

On the other hand, into A Captain at Fifteen , I had begun to evince what can the bravery and acumen of a child with the hazard and arduous of responsibility over his age. But I thought that if the teaching contained in this book could be beneficial to all, it must be unbroken.

It is in this dual purpose that was made this new book.

Jules Verne