Abel's island / William Steig.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

William's Steig's Abel's Island tells the story of a mouse who gets swept away from his beloved wife -- a truly timeless classic about life's simple pleasures.

Abel's place in his familiar, mouse world has always been secure; he had an allowance from his mother, a comfortable home, and a lovely wife, Amanda. But one stormy August day, furious flood water carry him off and dump him on an uninhabited island. Despite his determination and stubborn resourcefulness--he tried crossing the river with boats and ropes and even on stepping-stones--Abel can't find a way to get back home.

Days, then weeks and months, pass. Slowly, his soft habits disappear as he forages for food, fashions a warm nest in a hollow log, models clay statues of his family for company, and continues to brood on the problem of how to get across the river--and home.

Abel's time on the island brings him a new understanding of the world he's separated from. Faced with the daily adventure of survival in his solitary, somewhat hostile domain, he is moved to reexamine the easy way of life he had always accepted and discovers skills and talents in himself that hold promise of a more meaningful life, if and when he should finally return to Mossville and his dear Amanda again.

Abel's Island is a 1976 New York Times Book Review Notable Children's Book of the Year and Outstanding Book of the Year, and a 1977 Newbery Honor Book. It was adapted to a short animated film directed by Michael Sporn in 1988.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Booklist Review

The dapper mouse Abel, attempting to save his wife's scarf in a violent storm, is swept to a desert island where he languishes for a year before returning home.

Kirkus Book Review

Early in August of 1907 newlywed mice Abel and Amanda are enjoying a genteel picnic when ""it"" is so inconsiderate as to storm. Abel, who leaves their shelter to retrieve his wife's blown-away scarf, doesn't return for a year, as he is swept off to an uninhabited island where, for the first time in his life, survival requires hard work and straggle. Though preoccupied at first with efforts to escape, Abel eventually settles in on the island: rediscovering his teeth as a primitive tool (but, disarmingly, using his pen knife to escape an owl's homy clutches), making clay statues of his loved ones, holing up in a hollow log during the wretched winter, passing better times with a large book he finds on the shore (though, by spring, he's glad to finish it because ""what was happening around him was a lot more exciting""), and visiting for a while with a passing frog of abstracted mentality and crude ways which both impress and disgust the wellbred mouse. It is the frog who suggests that in his statues Abel has ""found your vocation""--a remark that nicely focuses the trying experience's value for Abel. Steig, almost insidiously, wins you at once to this pampered, untried mouse, and then you grow along with him as he makes himself fit for the world. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.