Melvin Barnes's story about The Coral Island

I think for most of us the book in question does not leap out from the past, blow a raspberry and yell. “It was me, you fool it was me.” If like me, and I think there are many, you will have read countless books. Some that left in their wake such breathless excitement you just had to leave the house, jump on the bus and go change it for another at the Carnegie Free Library on the high street.
In this category I think of Kemlo who lived on a space station. A boy who was so called because everyone on space station “K” had a name that began with the 11th letter of the alphabet. How exciting it must have been to wake up each morning and view the Earth framed upon the vista of black space. William Brown however was a little more down to earth, a cheery rascal who spent his days getting into mischief.
I was in my fourteenth year when I collapsed at school with such a terrible cramp that I was sure I was going to die. I was living at the time in a Children’s home. Before I could say library book I found myself not only in hospital but also under the surgeon’s knife. When I awoke from the operation the last thing on my mind was books. I spent all of that term away from school.
Books were brought round the wards on a trolley, none suitable for children. One day a nurse stopped at my bedside and handed me a book and said “Just the book for you young man.” I thought this kind of her and I thanked her very much. Oh the name of the book? JM Ballantyne’s “The Coral Island”
It was not long before I was on that Polynesian island with Jack and Ralph and Peterkin doing all the wonderful things that can be done in a world devoid of adults. When the idyllic peace was broken by pirates all that had to be done was to dive into the sea and hide in the underwater cave. I really enjoyed that book so much.
Years later I read the book again. It dawned on me then that when I entered the hospital the books I read came from the Pens of Crompton, Eliott and a sprinkling of Enid Blyton. I don’t think I read another children’s book from the day I left the hospital.

Before returning to school next term I had already, with great enthusiasm embraced the hilarious upper crust world of Jeeves and Bertie Wooster

Throughout my life the books I have read have been light and escapist I am not really sure if “The Coral Island” changed my life but I do think it shifted the direction of my life for in the reading of it I think it went with me through the gate from childhood to adulthood. It’s just that I didn’t actually notice it at the time.