Treasure Island

by Robert Louis Stevenson
illustrated by N.C. Wyeth
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1939 (orig. copyright 1911).

Young Jim Hawkins finds adventure when a "gentleman of fortune" stays at his father's inn, and the old pirate's compatriots come looking for him -- and a treasure map!

Treasure Island is the quintessential adventure tale: a daring hero, a treasure, and dastardly pirates. I had a few false starts trying to read it as a kid, but I drowned in the antiquated language due to a book that's a hundred years old set in the 1700s. But when I was without power for several days after the October Nor'easter, it was the perfect book to take me far and away from my circumstances. Partly because I knew much of the storyline (mostly, I admit, through watching Muppet Treasure Island as a kid), partly because Jim is clearly narrating events that happened before, there was never any doubt that our English heroes would make it through unscathed, but this true blue adventure tale is certainly entertaining.