Treasure Island (fiction)

Robert Louis Stevenson (1883)

THE A5 BOOK REVIEW

Treasure Island is a classic fictional adventure story written by Robert Louis Stevenson, best for ages 10+, and surprisingly still readable more than 100 years after it was written.  It was the first real pirate book, and one of the most dramatized novels of all time.  The primary character and narrator is the modest but heroic thirteen-year-old Jim Hawkins who, along with two adult friends, find a treasure map and decide to take a ship to investigate and explore.  They soon realize the secret is out and that their ship is filled with mutinous pirates, led by the legendary one-legged Long John Silver and his parrot.  The marvelous tale still holds up today as a brilliant coming-of-age story with rich characters and a thrillingly suspenseful clash between good and evil.
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ABOUT ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) was a 19th century Scottish writer and poet, most famous for classic children’s books like Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  He was well known even in his own time, active in London literary circles, although he became better recognized as a great writer in the late 20th century.  Stevenson (or as popularly called RLS) is one of the most translated authors of all time.  Besides his trip to France, as described in Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes, he is also famous for his travels around the South Pacific.

GREAT QUOTES:

“I'm cap'n here by 'lection. I'm cap'n here because I'm the best man by a long sea-mile. You won't fight, as gentlemen o' fortune should; then, by thunder, you'll obey, and you may lay to it! I like that boy, now; I never seen a better boy than that. He's more a man than any pair of rats of you in this here house, and what I say is this: let me see him that'll lay a hand on him--that's what I say, and you may lay to it.” 
- Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island

INTERESTING LINKS: