Treasure Island - Book 44

We read Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson out loud to Becky for her Good Books class at Aquinas Learning.  She started off by listening to it on audio.  We got this version, which I thought she would like.  But she could not understand the antiquated language, so she got frustrated with it.  So I wound up reading it aloud to her.  At the end, though because we were under a time crunch, my husband began reading it aloud when I wasn't available.  Then I'd snatch it up and read quickly to catch up when I had a moment or two.

Treasure Island is a classic for a reason.  Robert Louis Stevenson, in spite of the old fashioned language and all the seamanship terminology, still manages to tell a most gripping story of Jim Hawkins and his adventures with pirates aboard the Hispaniola.  This book is scary!  It has lots of terrifying moments and memorable characters.  Starting with Billy Bones, the blind beggar/pirate Pew, Long John Silver, of course, Doctor Livesey, Squire Trelawney and Ben Gunn, the book just rollicks along with all kinds of exciting twists and turns.  Jim's life is in danger more than once, and there is a lot of violence for something that is now considered a children's book.  In fact, this book was supposed to be the family read aloud for our program, but most of the parents have younger children just in first or second grade and they found they could not read the book aloud to them.  Either the kids just couldn't understand it or it was way too scary for them.  They wound up reading abridged versions or watching the Disney movies (which is quite good) or the Muppet Treasure Island (also quite good and very silly!).

I think Treasure Island makes an excellent read aloud for a nine or ten year old, so my advice is wait until they are old enough to appreciate it and won't find it quite so frightening.  Be prepared to stop and explain the language.  Luckily my husband knows all those technical boating words so he could define them for us.  Otherwise we'd have been at the dictionary trying to satisfy Becky's curiosity.  I, myself, have read this book several times before, and simply glossed over all the technical talk.  You can still pick up the action of the story without understanding those terms precisely.

Our book was illustrated by Milo Winter.  I do think that since this book is such a classic, it is nice to have it in hardback with great illustrations.

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