"Treasure Island" by Robert Louis Stevenson

I read this book aloud to my nine-year-old daughter and was surprised that she really got into it (my five-year-old son didn't really understand it and usually left the room). While researching this book a little I found out that it includes about 200 words that are no longer in common use in English so we had to spend a lot of time looking up words in the dictionary as we went along. My copy of this book that was published by Puffin Classics and it includes a glossary of common pirate terminology in the back along with a list of characters with a short bio about each.

Also, we checked out a couple of children's non-fiction books about pirates that included pictures of ships that labeled different parts of the boat. This was a difficult book for reading out loud because of all of the dialogue that includes pirate slang (not really my expertise) - I would love to hear this book on an audiobook by an expert!

The author did a great job of making the reader step into the life of the lead character, a fourteen-year-old boy, named Jim Hawkins. A definite page turner, I found myself anticipating how Jim would get out of each intense moment. One reason I enjoyed reading this book out loud to my daughter is that it does contain some very scary moments - including gun fighting, descriptions of less-than-wholesome living, and murder. This gave me an opportunity to talk about these things with her and discuss them as needed.

This book is broken down into six parts; each including about five chapters. Each chapter is about 8-10 pages long making it very easy to sit down and read a little bit and set it down for later.

**** Four stars