In my book club we recently had a discussion about reading books again that we read in our youth, like Treasure Island, 1984, Animal Farm, Great Expectations, The Catcher in the Rye, and Lord of the Flies. Since I never read Treasure Island as an adolescent, I decided to give it a try. It is absolutely delightful! It is a tale worth reading. Robert Louis Stevenson's prose is appropriate for youths or adults and the plot has enough twists and turns to keep the reader on their toes. The story is rich in detail and intrigue. Stevenson is able to develop character with a few details, as does Charles Dickens. Quickly we empathize and identify with the feisty, clever, honest boy Jim Hawkins. The pirates are great. They are such a lousy bag of scum and Stevenson has the ability to make them evil and also individuals, a real skill. We also learn the tale through the eyes of an adolescent boy. This is a wonderful technique used by Salinger in Catcher in the Rye and used by Mark Twain in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. This technique is powerful in that it allows the character as well as the reader to encounter characters and situations with naive eyes and thus must use native intelligence to separate lie from truth, safety from danger. While the boy main character is trying to figure out who to trust, the reader is also. Jim Hawkins is a likable boy and Stevenson has a sense of the physicality and movement and energy of boys. He has Jim engaging in physical activities in which an adolescent would undertake in an emergency that an adult might not. This feature helps explain the popularity over many years of this book for adolescent males. Jim, the son of a terminally ill tavern owner and his wife, is exposed to the pirates when Billy Bones comes to hide out in their remote tavern and inn. Immediately Stevenson lets us know that some adults are not to be trusted and are of low, dangerous character. That is another great aspect of the book since it doesn't sugar coat adulthood but allows Jim to see adults as a mixture of virtue, foolishness, greed, and homicidal intention. The Squire Trelawney and Dr. Livesey are examples of realistically developed adults, sometimes foolish and sometimes heroic. Another fine aspect of the book is that it is about recognizing, understanding, and counter-acting treachery. The character of Long John Silver is wonderful. He would be classified as a psychopath by today's psychological standards but when written, he was very evil and very smart, a deadly combination. Without giving away any of the plot, Jim must outsmart Long John Silver just to survive and thus the tension developed by character and an economical storyline makes the book a real treat. The book deserves to be considered a classic and deserves more than 5 stars since it is an enjoyable classic, the best combination.
Vignettes of nostalgic town life reminiscent of Tom Sawyer or the Five Little Peppers. We first meet Babs and Betty Moss at a dolls' tea party in which they discover the clever show dog Sancho foraging for his master Ben, a runaway from the circus. Ben's father had left the circus for a more promising job, intending to send for his son once he was settled. With his father's protection gone, Ben is harshly treated by the circus master and runs away.
Arriving soon after the runaways are Celia and her young brother Thornton, returning to their old home after being gone for years. Thorny is weak from a long illness and is wheelchair-ridden and crabby although he admits that Celia is "the best sister that ever was". She hires Ben to amuse her brother during his convalescence while allowing Babs and Betty, whose mother takes care of the premises, to continue to play house on the porch and path. The kids occupy themselves with botanical expeditions, ship-building, water wheels and other waterworks play, picnics, baseball and archery. Babs loses Sancho at a circus and Betty finds him again in pitiful shape after accompanying Thorny to the dentist. Celia breaks her arm after a fall from her horse and is rescued by Ben. He is gradually weaned away from the roving circus life although Celia invites the school to a splendid birthday party for him where he shows himself in his former circus glory as Cupid on a galloping horse. There is a little trouble with missing money and false accusations but Ben, who is honest and true, gradually endears himself to the two families. Several joyous unions and reunions take place at the end as well as one intended for the future, although in the midst of preparing for one, the incorrigible Babs almost burns down the house under the lilacs. The tone is quaint and old-fashioned but the simple pleasures of life shine through and Ben is both boy-like and engaging.
For anyone wanting a good, quick, historical/non-fiction ebook to read in less than a day, then this ebook is definitely for you. Although, be warned, this is no substitute for the literature that Frederick Douglass wrote himself. This ebook provides a good, short synopsis of his life. Hey, my suggestion to anyone thinking about reading this would be to download it and read it when your either commuting, waiting for an appointment, in a coffee shop, or just hanging out in the park on a nice sunny day. Enjoy everyone and thanks Amazon!
Published in 1845, this pre-eminent American slave narrative powerfully details the life of the internationally famous abolitionist Frederick Douglass from his birth into slavery in 1818 to his escape to the North in 1838-how he endured the daily physical and spiritual brutalities of his owners and drivers, how he learned to read and write, and how he grew into a man who could only live free or die.
Enriched eBook Features Editors Houston Baker and Derrick R. Spiresprovides the following specially commissioned features for this Enriched eBook Classic:
* Chronology
* Nineteenth-Century Reviews and Responses
* Further Reading
* Day in a Slave-s Life
* Sorrow Songs and Sheet Music
* -The Church and Prejudice- (1841)
* Introduction to -Oration,- or -The Meaning of theFourth of July for the Negro-
* -The Meaning of the Fourth of July for the Negro-(1852)
* Introduction to -The Heroic Slave-
* -The Heroic Slave- (1853)
* -My Escape from Slavery- (1881)
* Douglass Sites to Visit in the United States
* Portraits and Illustrations
* Enriched eBook Notes
The enriched eBook format invites readers to go beyond the pages of these beloved works and gain more insight into the life and times of an author and the period in which the book was originally written for a rich reading experience.
