Call it Courage

This novel, published in 1940, was awarded the American Literary Association’s Newbery Medal as “the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children” in that year. Set in the South Pacific "many years... before the traders and missionaries first came”, its central character is Mafatu, an adolescent boy, who is terrified of the sea having been at sea with his mother in a storm in which she died. He lives on the atoll of Hikueru in the Tuamotu Archipelago and is the son of Tavana Nui, the great chief of the island community. Mocked by his peers for his timidity, he resolves to change his reputation; “he must prove his courage to himself, and to the others, or he could no longer live in their midst” and so with his pet dog he sets out in a canoe to conquer his fear of the ocean.

The author, Armstrong Sperry (born 7 November 1897), grew up in New Haven, Connecticut. He was a student at the Yale School of Art when he was drafted to serve in the Navy in September 1918. After the war, he spent several years travelling around Polynesia, assisting with ethnological research and practising art. His first children's book, complete with his own illustrations, was published in 1933. Almost all of his stories were written with an ethnographic focus. He also was a prolific illustrator of children’s books by other authors, including William Standish Stone’s Teri Taro from Bora Bora, set in the same region of Polynesia as Call it Courage.

Soon after Mafatu sets off on his adventure, he faces a severe storm in which he loses the mast and sail. An ocean current carries his canoe to a small island before his boat is destroyed on the reef. He makes it to shore and sets about the tasks of survival (finding food, making fire, building a shelter, constructing a dugout canoe). During his time on the island, he kills a shark and a wild boar. When the otherwise uninhabited island island is visited by fierce cannibals, he flees in his new canoe with the warriors in hot pursuit. As a strong swimmer nears the boat, Mafatu shows fighting courage to resist his attack:
“The boy lifted the paddle and cracked it down... With a groan the man dropped back into the water.”
When after a long journey he returns to his home island, his father does not recognise him. Like a returning soldier, he “staggered up the beach... wasted and thin” and greeted Tava Nui as “father”. The chief is astonished that “this brave figure, so thin and straight, with the fine necklace [of boar’s teeth] and the flashing spear and courage blazing from his eyes” is his son come home from the sea.