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The Cay, Theodore Taylor's classic bestseller and Lewis Carroll Shelf Award winner, comes highly recommended for fans of Hatchet and Island of the Blue Dolphins. Phillip, the protagonist, is initially excited when the Germans invade the small island of Curaçao, as war has always been a game to him, and he's eager to witness it firsthand. However, his excitement quickly turns to fear when the freighter he and his mother are traveling to the United States on is torpedoed.

When Phillip regains consciousness, he finds himself on a small raft in the middle of the sea, with only Stew Cat and an old West Indian named Timothy as his companions. Phillip remembers his mother's warning about black people, stating that "they are different, and they live differently." However, as the castaways arrive on a small island, Phillip's head injury has left him blind and dependent on Timothy.

The New York Times Book Review praises the book, stating that "Mr. Taylor has provided an exciting story" and that "the idea that all humanity would benefit from this special form of color blindness permeates the whole book." Kirkus Reviews describes the novel as "a taut tightly compressed story of endurance and revelation, at once barbed and tender, tense and fragile—as Timothy would say, 'outrageous good.'"

School Library Journal, in a starred review, commends the "fully realized setting," the "artful, unobtrusive use of dialect," and the "representation of a hauntingly deep love, the poignancy of which is rarely achieved in children's literature." The Saturday Review deems the book "starkly dramatic, believable and compelling," while Publishers Weekly calls it "a tense and moving experience in reading." Booklist applauds the book for "eloquently underscoring the intrinsic brotherhood of man."

The Cay has received numerous accolades, including being named a New York Times Best Book of the Year, a School Library Journal Best Book of the Year, and a Horn Book Honor Book. It has also been recognized by the American Library Association as a Notable Book, and it has won the Publishers Weekly Children's Book to Remember award, the Child Study Association's Pick of Children's Books of the Year, the Jane Addams Book Award, the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award, the Commonwealth Club of California: Literature Award, the Southern California Council on Literature for Children and Young People Award, the Woodward School Annual Book Award, and the Friends of the Library Award from the University of California at Irvine.

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