Treasure Island
By Robert Lewis Stevenson
This selection is read by Horace Beck, “a sailor home from the sea.”

If you were an innkeeper’s son like Jim Hawkins, sweeping out the bar, wiping down the tables and serving drinks to the locals day after day, wouldn’t you be glad to see even a broken down old sailor like Billy Bones, bringing with him the whiff of adventure in distant lands? Well, Jim and his family take care of old Bones, cross and rumbustious as he often is, and they get their reward, though it takes Jim’s willingness to go to sea with the motley crew of the ship Hispaniola to make it happen.

THINGS TO DO ONLINE

Kids do pirates
The Rochedale school in Queensland, Australia (that’s on the East Coast near Sydney, site of the 2000 Olympic games), have a wicked good pirate site. When you have a comment, click on the skull and bones.

What’s in a name?
Stevenson named Jim’s family’s inn the “Admiral Benbow.” You might think this was just by chance, but there’s a reason Stevenson gave it that name. To find out, click here.


MORE THINGS TO DO

Do a treasure hunt for a friend
Here’s what you need: A big sheet (11” x 14”) of paper, a pencil or colored pens, a ribbon, a used teabag, gold-covered chocolate coins or anything else fun, like fireworks.
What to do:

1. Pick the starting and ending (treasure is hidden HERE) points. If you have a park or other defined area, it helps when going point to point.
2. Before drawing your map, walk the path from start to finish. As you go, pick 5 or 6 places for which you’ll write the clues.
3. To get the map ready, have an adult help you ‘toast’ the edges of your paper to make it look like the old parchment pirates would have used.
4. Draw the outline of the area of the hunt—it doesn’t have to be really exact. Mark the starting point with a sticker or drawing. Put an X anyplace to show the treasure. Draw things you see in the area like trees, streams, mailboxes, just to give the map features. Rub over with the fairly dry used teabag to give it an old look.
5. Write clues out and then try them on someone at home to see if they make sense. Change as needed. Write the clues on separate pieces of paper. Clues can be things like “Walk ten paces, then find a place with water.” You can use symbols, too.
6. Bury the clues at each point you chose (you may have to put them in plastic sandwich bags). Hide the treasure.
7. Roll up the map and tie with a ribbon. Hand to the intended treasure hunter when ready to begin.

Cook up a sailors’ treat
Aboard ship, besides salted beef and maggoty hard tack—that’s biscuits--18th and even 19th century sailors had only two things to warm their often frozen bones: Plum Duff and rum. As kids are too young for the latter, here’s Camel’s Hump Cooks’ recipe for Plum Duff

Note: The "Things to do" sections can often use an adult’s help or encouragement.



FROM THE CHR LIBRARIAN

Robert Louis Stevenson books
Stevenson’s Kidnapped (and its fellow The Master of Ballantrae) is the most likely companion adventure for Treasure Island. It’s not nearly as scary as the other Stevenson classic Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses is still full of poems to treasure and to introduce children to before they’ve reached the age when it’s not cool to like anything that isn’t currently popular with their own set. Stevenson is a modern author in the sense that his books and stories are written in a very accessible way even today. His short stories and novellas like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are available in a one-volume paperback.

The prequel
Yes, there’s an authentically rousing novel, for all ages, by Arthur D. Howden Smith called Portobello Gold.

A treasure hunt
This online Treasure Hunt focusing on the California Gold Rush is a great way to introduce children to finding facts on the Web. It’s part of a series of hunts from a site called Museum Mania and seems best for children 10 and up. (This site was checked and the Treasure Hunt was working as of 4/29/2001.)

Pirate treasure in New England
Captain Kidd really could have buried his treasure near Newport as our guest-reader Horace Beck reports.

Visit a real pirate ship, the Whydah
Provincetown, Massachusetts, has a museum dedicated to the pirate ship Whydah discovered recently near Brewster, Mass. You can visit the ongoing archeological excavation online or read the National Georgraphic article about this first documented pirate ship in American waters.

Blackbeard’s ship?
In 1997, a ship thought to be Blackbeard’s flagship, the Queen Anne’s Revenge, was found off Beaufort, North Carolina. Here’s the original news report.

Here’s the online site that reports the ongoing efforts to identify the Queen Anne’s Revenge, thought to be Blackbeard’s flagship.