I love that my 7th grader was assigned Treasure Island for English Class.
In school my English teachers did their very best to kill my love for reading. Grapes of Wrath? Snooze. Thank goodness for Cliffs Notes.
Treasure Island, though? Winner.
I hadn't read it myself, though it'd been holding up the bottom of my Mount TBR for several years. A school assignment for a kiddo was perfect excuse to dig it out and get caught up.
Here's what I found:
It's pirates and buried treasure from a 12-year-old boy's perspective--the perfect adventure book.
One unexpected bit of fun was discovering Treasure Island is the original source for everything we associate with pirates. Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum, 15 men on a dead man's chest, a squawking parrot riding on a shoulder, "X" marks the spot, Jolly Roger, shiver my timbers, land ho, buried treasure, Long John Silver, one-legged men, sea-dog, scars on faces...these are just the ones off the top of my head.
In Treasure Island, there is much fun to be had.
As Sir Mix-A-Lot would say, there is one big but...
The book was written in 1883, and reads like it. I love escaping into the past through words, but my 12-year-old doesn't have the patience to translate all the "foreign English." We're reading it together, and he's enjoying it. Left to himself, he'd never get through it.
Other than that watch-out, give Treasure Island a try. It's only about 170-ish pages and well worth your time. Maybe the perfect chance to give your kiddo's a taste of "the classics."
Happy Reading!