The Swiss Family Robinson

By: Johann Wyss

Narrated by: B.J. Harrison

A horrible tempest hurls an abandoned ship against the shoal rocks with the force of a hurricane. Once the tremendous storm passes, a family appears from within the crushed vessel. Now a father, a mother, and their four sons must carve out a new life for themselves on an unchartered tropical island. Come and join the Swiss Family Robinson, as they learn how to survive while battling the savage forces of nature and discover the wonders of their own paradise.

Public Domain (P)2010 B. J. Harrison

A Wordy Classic

The readers voice was the best preferred to listen to by myself and my children but it is a very long, wordy version.

Shipwrecked!

If you could sum up The Swiss Family Robinson in three words, what would they be?

shipwrecked adventure resourcefulness

How would you have changed the story to make it more enjoyable?

The pastor seemed to have infinite knowledge of all subjects, and knew the exact use for every plant or animal they encountered. This was a little hard to believe after awhile.

Which character – as performed by B.J. Harrison – was your favorite?

Pretty much the whole story was in the voice of the father, from his point of view, without different inflections for different characters, so no voice stands out except that of the narrator.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

No.

Any additional comments?

Overall, a very enjoyable story. The voice of the reader was pleasant to listen to, and the story was engaging.

Boys love it!

My two boys loved this adventure, and listen to it over and over again.
The narrator does a good job in the telling of this story.

Enjoyable

An enjoyable classic for those who love nature. could see the possibility of using it for homeschool purposes.

loved this book best so far..

I had seen the move but found the book very good I was completely drawn in..

Disappointed

sections were missing.. some favorite parts of the later years were not included.. ending was different than I remember

super preachy. Robinson Caruso was better.<br />

this is a book written for children to teach them to love God back in the eighteen-hundreds. The adventure story is less important to the author then the moral lessons he teaches in the story. The author somehow manages to make exciting Adventures into boring moral lessons.

Disney did it 100x better.

So, I was pretty pumped to listen to this. I had saved it for a long week, where I was burnt out. I love the Disney movie, I love the classic books Treasure Island and Huckleberry Finn, I love books on rebuilding society (like all the zombie books & movies I'm into), and I love Gilligan's Island; so I thought this book would be a mix of all those things. I was wrong. This book was trash. It broke my heart. This book is nothing but a Trojan Horse to give children garbage science lessons with roundabout Sunday school speak. Everything works out perfect for the family. Not one hardship. They discover planets and animals from 6 continents on this tiny sandy island. All the children are annoying to a severe degree, while the father and the lazy son can practice every Victorian trade without fail because they have read a lot of books. Also, not one pirate. Not. One. Thanks Disney, thanks for doing that to me. Garbage. One star.

Abridged version is actually better

My 7 year old daughter and I read a Children’s Illustrated classic version of this story together and enjoyed it. She wanted to share it with her sisters and I thought an unabridged version would only be better. Wrong. Too much minutia to be a moving story or decent moral lesson. Plus the ending was a let down. The BJ Harrison’s reading was excellent at 1.25x speed. Overall though we enjoyed the illustrated classic better.

This sucks a lot

I had to read the puffin classic version of this for school and I was just going to list to the audio book but this audio book is still in old English wear the books you buy now are more modernized. Also the audio book had 36 chapters and the puffin classic only had 18 and I am very disappointed I spent my free trial on this crappy book.