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Synopsis

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

Fifteen men on the dead man's chest-Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum! When young Jim Hawkins discovers a map showing the way to Captain Flint's treasure, he and Squire Trelawney set sail on the Hispaniola to search for the gold. Little do they know that among their crew is the dastardly pirate Long John Silver. Silver has a devious plan to keep the gold all to himself. Can brave Jim outwit the most infamous pirate ever to sail the high seas? Will he escape from Treasure Island alive?

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Reviews

It is a breathless journey and the closest thing to a real pirate adventure without an eye patch and a time machine... It is a unique work of genius -- Eoin Colfer, Author Of Artemis Fowl There are few novels which grip so thrillingly as those first read in childhood, and for me none which has quite matched the excitement of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island -- P.D. James Who can think of a pirate without conjuring up the image of Long John Silver?
Daily Mail
So what makes these different to any other set of classics? In a moment of inspiration Random House had the bright idea of actually asking Key stage 2 children what extra ingredients they could add to make children want to read. And does it work? Well, put it this way...my 13-year-old daughter announced that she had to read a book over the summer holiday and, without any prompting, spotted The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas...and proceeded to read it! Now, if you knew my 13-year-old daughter, you would realise that this is quite remarkable. She reads texts, blogs and tags by the thousand - but this is the first book she has read since going to high school, so all hail Vintage Classics! National Association for the Teaching of English

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About The Author

Robert Louis Stevenson was born to Thomas and Margaret Isabella Balfour Stevenson in Edinburgh on 13 November 1850. From the beginning he was sickly. Through much of his childhood he was attended by his faithful nurse, Alison Cunningham, known as Cummy in the family circle. She told him morbid stories about the Covenanters (the Scots Presbyterian martyrs), read aloud to him Victorian penny-serial novels, Bible stories, and the Psalms, and drilled the catechism into him, all with his parents' approval. Thomas Stevenson was quite a storyteller himself, and his wife doted on their only child, sitting in admiration while her precocious son expounded on religious dogma. Stevenson inevitably reacted to the morbidity of his religious education and to the stiffness of his family's middle-class values, but that rebellion would come only after he entered Edinburgh University.

The juvenilia that survives from his childhood shows an observer who was already sensitive to religious issues and Scottish history. Not surprisingly, the boy who listened to Cummy's religious tales first tried his hand at retelling Bible stories: "A History of Moses" was followed by "The Book of Joseph." When Stevenson was sixteen his family published a pamphlet he had written entitled The Pentland Rising, a recounting of the murder of Nonconformist Scots Presbyterians who rebelled against their royalist persecutors.

 

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