The Coral Island are, in his own words, "adventure stories for young folks", and "The Coral Island" is no exception. It is a Robinsonade, a genre of fiction inspired by Daniel Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe" (1719), one of the most popular of its type, and one of the first works of juvenile fiction to feature exclusively juvenile heroes. Susan Maher, professor of English, notes that in comparison to "Robinson Crusoe" such books generally replaced some of the original's romance with a "pedestrian realism", exemplified by works such as "The Coral Island" and Frederick Marryat's 1841 novel "Masterman Ready, or the Wreck of the Pacific".
The Prince of Tides describe Tom Wingo's relationship with his siblings in great detail. In the novel, these flashbacks form the main plot and take up more of the novel than the romance between Streisand's character, Dr. Lowenstein, and Tom Wingo. The removal of the flashbacks makes the relationship between Wingo and Lowenstein the central story in the film, whereas in the novel, it is not. Another character in the novel - the second Wingo brother, Luke, who appears only in flashbacks onscreen - is vitally important to the novel, and his death is a major plot point. In fact, the title of the