By Scott O’Dell

太平洋中有一个岛屿，形状像一条侧躺的海豚。岛的周围有海豚在游泳，有海獭在嬉戏，有海象在争雄，有野狗在决斗……这就是蓝色的海豚岛。

Perhaps I should tell you about our island so you will know how it looks and where our village was and where the Aleuts camped for most of the summer.

Our island is two1)leagueslong and one league wide,and if you were standing on one of the hills that rise in the middle of it,you would think that it looked like a fish.Like a dolphin lying on its side,with its tail pointing toward the sunrise,its nose pointing to the sunset,and its2)finsmaking reefs and the rocky ledges along the shore.Whether someone did stand there on the low hills in the days when the earth was new and,because of its shape,called it the Island of the Blue Dolphins,I do not know.Many dolphins live in our seas and it may be from them that the name came.But one way or another,this is what the island was called.

1) leaɡue [liːɡ] n.里格（长度单位，约等于4000 米）

2) fin [fɪn] n.(鱼的)鳍

The first thing you would notice about our island,I think,is the wind.It blows almost every day,sometimes from the northwest and sometimes from the east,once in a long while out of the south.All the winds except the one from the south are strong,and because of them the hills are polished3)smoothand the trees are small and4)twisted,even in the canyon that runs down to Coral Cove.

3) smooth [smuːð] adj.(表面）光滑的；平坦的

4) twist [twɪst] v.扭弯；缠绕

也许我应该讲一讲我们岛的情况，以便你了解它的地形，村子在什么地方，整个夏天阿留申人多半驻扎在什么地方。

我们的岛有两里格长，一里格宽，假如你站在岛中央耸起的一座小山上，你会认为它像一条鱼。它像一条侧躺的海豚，尾巴指向日出的地方，鼻子朝着日落的地方，它的鳍就是暗礁和沿岸的石壁。当初这个岛新发现的时候，是否有人确实站在那些小山上，根据形状把它叫作蓝色的海豚岛呢，那我就不知道了。我们的海里聚居着许多海豚，由此得名也有可能。但不管怎么说，我们就是这样称呼这个岛的。

关于我们的岛，我想，你首先会注意到的就是风。这里差不多天天刮风，有时刮西北风，有时刮东风，每隔一些时候刮上一阵南风。除了南风以外，其他风都刮得很大，因为这个缘故，这里的山都是光秃秃的，树干低矮盘曲，即使珊瑚湾峡谷中的树木也是如此。

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《蓝色的海豚岛》是一部专门写给孩子但同样对大人也充满魔力的历史小说，自20 世纪60 年代出版以来，仅在美国就销售了600 多万册。它曾被美国协会评为“1776 年以来最伟大的10 部儿童文学作品”之一，曾先后荣获国际安徒生奖、纽伯瑞儿童文学奖等七种儿童文学奖。