Moreover, with the strong female characters so often featured in his novels, O'Dell made an indirect plea for gender equality.
Best known for his first juvenile novel, Island of the Blue Dolphins, O'Dell once commented that the theme of that book develops the idea of "Albert Schweitzer's reverence for all life. And the belief that we must learn to forgive our enemies, that the hopes of civilization itself, obscure as they are, cannot be realized without this act of identification." This theme is reflected in the rest of O'Dell's oeuvre, in works that deal with such topics as racial conflict and coming to terms with one's enemies. O'Dell addresses such issues using a style that is characterized by simple, laconic sentences. The quality of O'Dell's work is substantiated by the numerous awards he earned, including in addition to the Newbery Medal, the Hans Christian Andersen award of merit, and five other awards for Island of the Blue Dolphins, a Newbery Honor award and German Juvenile International Award for his second most acclaimed book, The King's Fifth, as well as two further Newbery Honor citations, for The Black Pearl and Sing down the Moon.
A Southern California Youth
Born in 1898, in Los Angeles, California, O'Dell grew up in a Southern California that would hardly be recognizable today.
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