a donated book missing its tape recording.

Lisa Norby does a good job of adapting an old classic. My only fear is that readers might think that, because they read this version, they will not get anything new out of reading the original. That being said, this adaptation is great for young readers. It is exciting, written simply, and has a few illustrations. It can be read aloud or alone. Any child interested in pirates (maybe stemming off of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies) would enjoy this book. It is a coming-of-age tale that will send readers into a world that is, most likely, very different than their own. Ages 7-10. ( )

A great adventure for all ages. ( )

"There is no reason why "Treasure Island" should not be to the rising generation of the twenty-first century what "Robinson Crusoe" has been to that of the nineteenth. The balance of probability is all in that direction. " --Through the Magic Door, p. 265

"What noble books of their class are those last, "Kidnapped" and "Treasure Island"! both, as you see, shining forth upon my lower shelf. "Treasure Island" is the better story, while I could imagine that "Kidnapped" might have the more permanent value as being an excellent and graphic sketch of the state of the Highlands after the last Jacobite insurrection. Each contains one novel and admirable character, Alan Breck in the one, and Long John in the other.... " --Through the Magic Door, p. 262

Five out of ten.Stevenson's novel is narrated by the teenage Jim Hawkins, who outwits a gang of murderous pirates led by that unforgettable avatar of amorality, Long John Silver. ( )

It's slow starting, but once I got to about the middle of the book, I couldn't put it down. It's pretty much a straight-up adventure novel, with action and pirates and everything you could ever want, really. ( )

A smashing adventure. Everything you could want, pirates, treasure, betrayal and tropical islands. ( )

This novel was a pleasant surprise; I'd seen numerous movies based on it, but finally getting to the real thing was very satisfying. The detail is incredible and obviously the books gave so much more detail than the films I'd seen.

A fun, adventurous book that I look forward to going back and reading again. ( )

I wanted to like it, really I did. ( )

Rollicking adventure tale - great fun and now I know more about the allusions in Arthur Ransome's novels. ( )

Good clasic ( )

While going through the possessions of a deceased guest who owed them money, the mistress and her son find a treasure map that leads them to a pirate's fortune.

I read the "Jr." version of this as a kid and enjoyed it again as a 40 year old... I'm looking forward to reading this, a chapter a night, to my son & daughter when they're a little older. ( )

Obviously a great story. Fantastic illustrations by John Lawrence. The printing of this book is quite poor; the richness of the original images had much more life. I looked at these in the gallery from where I purchased the book. The blackness of the prints should be much darker than the washed out prints. I would have rather paid more for a well printed book and to have seen the illustrations match the originals. That said, I bought it and enjoyed it. Apart from the printing, the book is well designed and set. ( )

One of my favorite books of all time. This is the standard in adventure novels and for good reason. Every young boy and girl should read this book. ( )

The shortest form of this book which I have ever read. The classic story about pirates, treasures on an uninhabited island, adventures. The first time I read this story I was 10, right now I've gone back to this book to improve my English, but I prefer the whole story, so I hope- I'll read it soon. ( )

Pure classic. ( )

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted here illegally.)

The CCLaP 100: In which I read for the first time a hundred so-called "classics," then write essays on whether or not they deserve the label

Essay #32: Treasure Island (1883), by Robert Louis Stevenson

The story in a nutshell:
Inspired by a doodle from his step-son and originally written as a rainy-day family diversion, the slim 1883 children's book Treasure Island (originally published serially in 1881 and '82) was not only the first novel of sickly genre author Robert Louis Stevenson's short career, but eventually one of his most famous. Essentially the tale of young adventurer Jim Hawkins, the story opens with him as a dutiful mama's boy off the southwest coast of England, helping to run a family inn that sees little action because of being located much more inland than most of the other local sailor-oriented hotels. Ah, but this is exactly what brings the drunken, scary Billy Bones there, where it becomes quickly apparent that he is on the run and in semi-hiding from a whole crew of mysterious, nefarious characters; and when they finally show up after Bones' alcoholism-related death, the family realizes that they are in fact pirates, on the hunt for a treasure map that Bones stole from a recent mutinous voyage that went horribly, horribly wrong. This then convinces a group of local Victorian gentlemen and family friends to go after the treasure themselves, eventually buying a boat and hiring a local crew to take them to this far-off tropical island; but little do they realize that the sailors they've hired are none other than the surviving pirates of the former mutiny, led by the charismatic yet psychopathic one-legged "ship's cook" Long John Silver, who plan on turning on the ship's owners once actually reaching the island and retrieving the treasure they were forced to leave behind during their last voyage. The rest of the book, then, is essentially an adventure tale, full of all kinds of legitimate surprises that I won't spoil here; let's just say that a lot of swashbuckling takes place, that many details regarding ship-sailing are faithfully recorded, and that the day is eventually saved by our fast-thinking teenage hero Jim, no surprise at all for a book designed specifically to amuse fellow teenage boys.

The argument for it being a classic:
Well, to begin with, it's arguably the most famous pirate tale ever written, and in fact established for the first time many of the stereotypes now known within the genre, including one-legged buccaneers, treasure maps with a big 'X' on them, shoulder-sitting parrots squawking "Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight!," and even the very idea of British pirates being associated with exotic tropical islands in the Caribbean, an association now so strong that it's almost impossible to separate the two; and of course it's also the novel that created the unforgettable Long John Silver, now a thoroughly ingrained part of our Western culture at large. Add to this that it's simply an incredibly thrilling tale (rumor has it that England's Prime Minister at the time stayed up until two in the morning to finish his first reading of it), that it still holds up surprisingly well even 126 years later, and that it's also of immense importance to fans of Stevenson, a prolific author whose genius is just now starting to be widely recognized, after being dismissed by the literary community for almost a century as a frivolous "kiddie writer;" and now add to all this that Treasure Island is a surprisingly sophisticated examination of the era's ethics and moral code as well, taking an unblinking look at the "Victorian Ideal" as manifested in different ways among the stuffy gentlemen "heroes" (unable to improvise in changing circumstances, much to their detriment), the anarchic pirate villains (who almost kill themselves off just on their own, through drunkenness, ignorance and jealousy), and the ruthless yet principled Silver who straddles both these extremes.

The argument against:
A weak one at best; like many of the genre prototypes of the late Victorian Age, one could argue that this is simply too flippant a tale to be considered a classic. But we already established a long time ago here at the CCLaP 100 that genre stories are indeed eligible for "classic" status in this series, making this argument inapplicable in our case.

My verdict:
Holy crap! What an incredible book! And what a refreshing change in this case to not have to add my usual caveat to statements like these regarding late Victorian genre experiments: "...you know, for a century-old children's story that's kind of outdated and that you need to take with a grain of salt." Because the fact is that Treasure Island to this day still reads as fresh and exciting as the day it came out, which is a real testament to the writing skills of Robert Louis Stevenson (who I was already a big fan of before this essay series even started, because of his superbly creepy and also surprisingly relevant Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde); what a shame that this illness-plagued author ended up dying at the age of 44 in the prime of his career, instead of surviving to pen the truly mindblowing mature works I'm convinced that he had been capable of. And it's exactly for the reasons that his fans bring up that this book remains such an amazing one, and how it is that it can still easily be read for pleasure instead of having to force one's way through for historical purposes; because it is indeed not only a thrilling adventure tale, not only written in a style that largely rejects the purplish finery of the Victorian Age in which it was created, but is also a deceptively complex look at the entire nature of "gentlemanness" that was so prevalent at the time, gently poking holes in the entire notion of what it means to be a Refined Citizen of the Empire, even while acknowledging that a complete disavowal of these gentlemanly standards is even worse. There's a very good reason that Long John Silver has endured so strongly in our collective imagination over the last century, when so many other fictional pirates have fallen by the wayside, because he turns out to be a surprisingly complicated character worth coming back to again and again, a vicious killer but with a consistent internal moral code worth perversely admiring; it's but one of many reasons that I confidently label this book a undeniable classic today, and highly recommend it to anyone on the search for the best of 19th-century literature.

Is it a classic? Absolutely ( )

916 Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson (read 7 Sep 1967) I think I read this in high school but thought I should read it in its own volume so it would get on my list of "books read" cover to cover. I found it well worth reading anew. ( )

Not being at all well-read in the classics, I honestly didn't know any of the basics of this story. This 1-disc edition is certainly very abridged, but I thought that would be a good way for me to get a quick overview of this story. But I felt this was TOO abridged. The reader read quickly & I had a lot of trouble keeping track of the characters, let alone the storyline as to who the good guys & the bad guys were. It was very confusing for someone as ignorant as I was in respect to what was really happening in the story. I just felt like I didn't follow things very well due to how fast it zipped along. For someone who's read the book previously, I think this would probably be a good refresher. However, for those who haven't, you'd probably be better off going with the original unedited text. ( )

This book is a classic for a reason - filled with great characters and excitement and told by a master at his craft, what's not to like? ( )

Stevenson is an all-time classic author, and this book is rightfully held in the front rank of the Stevenson canon. It is often cited as a classic of young adult literature, and it clearly works as such, superbly so. But I would like to cite Mr. Stevenson's sophisticated and subtle portayal of his characters. The motivations are shaded, knowing, understandable, and realistic. We have the evolving, by turns treacherous and ingratiating, journey of Long John Silver. We have the captain of the vessel, and while not as subtle a character, certainly has his depths. And of course, the classic first-person Jim Hawkins, whose courage and resourcefulness are really the entree in this delicious meal.

There are some works which seem to carry all in the genre after it. This is one of those. In the words of Jorge Luis Borges: "I like antique maps, hourglasses, 18th-century type styles, the origins of words, the smell of coffee, and the prose of Stevenson." Amen. ( )

It’s not Pirates of the Caribbean, but it will suffice in the story department. Many pirate references that are familiar to all. Found out more the origin of Long John Silver, peg legs, talking parrots, pieces of eight, rum and every other pirate reference known to man.

Good ‘ol story.

An exciting and amusing adventure story of a young man who travels to Treasure Island in search of Captain Flint's buried treasure with half a crew of pirates, including Long John Silver. Well worth reading for any age. ( )

I dont like this story because it is long and boring.

If you like adventure stories i say you definitely want to read Treasure island book because it's really nice. ( )