The Coral Island the civilising effect of Christianity, 19th-century British imperialism in the South Pacific, and the importance of hierarchy and leadership. It was the inspiration for William Golding's dystopian novel "Lord of the Flies" (1954), which inverted the morality of "The Coral Island"; in Ballantyne's story the children encounter evil, but in "Lord of the Flies" evil is within them. In the early 20th century, the novel was considered a classic for primary school children in the UK, and in the United States it was a staple of high-school suggested reading lists. Modern critics consider the book's worldview to be dated and
The Mark of the Horse Lord hair of both substituting heroes is just one of the resemblances. "The Mark of the Horse Lord" won the inaugural, 1985 Phoenix Award from the Children's Literature Association as the best English-language children's book that did not win a major contemporary award when it was originally published twenty years earlier. It is named for the mythical bird phoenix, which is reborn from its ashes, to suggest the book's rise from obscurity. The Mark of the Horse Lord The Mark of the Horse Lord is a historical novel for children written by Rosemary Sutcliff and published in 1965. It won the