Oxford Bookworms Library Stage 2: Robinson Crusoe Daniel Defoe Retold by Diane Mowat
Robinson Crusoe
Have you ever been alone for a long time? Could you live alone on an island for many years? Could you build yourself a house, learn to grow corn and make bread, learn to make your own clothes from animal skins?
Robinson Crusoe is bored with his quiet life at home in England. He decides to be a sailor, and to travel the seas of the world. He has many exciting adventures, and in 1659 he is in a ship sailing from Brazil to Africa. One day there is a terrible storm. The ship begins to break up, and soon Crusoe and his friends are fighting for their lives in an angry sea. All his friends die, but Crusoe lives and reaches land. He finds himself in a strange, wild country - alive, but alone on a small island, with no food, no boat, no way of escape.
He will be there for the next twenty-seven years...
I often walked along the shore, and one day I saw something in the sand. I went over to look at it more carefully... It was a footprint - the footprint of a man!' In 1659 Robinson Crusoe was shipwrecked on a small island off the coast of South America. After fifteen years alone, he suddenly learns that there is another person on the island. But will this man be a friend - or an enemy?