Well, it was exactly as you might expect. Pirates, parrots, treasure, yar-har and rum. And like all books written back then, it ends very suddenly in a handful of pages. But it’s a kids’ book, so there’s no reason to expect a metaphysical masterpiece. This is about talking parrots and captains named Billy Bones. 7.5/10.

Well I waited until I'm almost 30 to read it, but here's what I thought. It is not for kids. I got the audiobook so my 8 year old brother can listen to it. After listening to it myself, I'm going to make him wait a few years. There's death. A lot of it. Brutal deaths too. There are issues that I wouldn't want the kid to read or listen about. Yes, there are pirates. Yes, they drink rum and are treacherous. The text is outdated too. But there is certainly adventure and excitement. 

This is a very nice, even classic adventure story. I rarely read anything in this genre and I loved this book. The plot is interesting, the characters are well-written and funny, the writing is light and descriptive without becoming overbearing. I enjoyed the main character - IMO, he was described quite realistically, being a teenage boy with all the flawed thinking. 
Overall, it’s a very light read, if you want to go into a short pirate adventure with a young, self-assured boy and other strongly opinionated characters. 

P.S. To be honest, I picked up this book because I was wondering how much of it, if anything at all, inspired the Treasure Planet cartoon lol. 

*3.5/5 

I don't think I ever read "Treasure Island" as a kid but what I did do was watch Disney's "Treasure Planet" and since then it has been my favourite Disney "comfort" movie. I only recently realised that the animated movie was inspired by this books so I had to read it. I definitely don't regret that decision (there are worse classics out there).

PROS:
The first half of this book was quite slow, however, part 5 and 6 were quite fast paced and definitely the most enjoyable. 

I liked Jim's character, since this is technically a children's book it makes sense that the protagonist would be younger. He was a great character who had to face a lot of tough situations such as being surrounded by calllous pirates, murder and the fight for survival. 

My favourite character by far was Long John Silver as he seemed the most complex to me. I liked that despite the double crossing he chose to stand by Jim's side at the end when all the other pirates wanted to kill him (to be fair it was to save himself from the gallows but such are the ways of morally grey characters).

What annoys me most about classics is that they'll ramble on and describe things for 100 pages straight and call it a day. In this case, Stevenson's use of word choice was enough to allow me to visualise the scenes but not overwritten to the point I lost interest.


CONS:
There were a few parts that I found bothersome namely the racism. Even with the understanding that "Treasure Island" like most other classics was written at a time when thoughts on race were much different than they are now,  as a modern reader I hate reading such comments in literature altogether. It particularly bothered me when Trelawney assumed that the reason Silver was always sailing was because he was married to a Black woman. 

Although there was definitely action and adventure I didn't really feel the excitement of this until the last 2 parts which is ironic. As well as this I didn't really like many of the decisions made in this book by the adults.


I think I would've appreciated the story much more had I read it at a younger age. However, Stevenson did a great job of combining more mature aspects such as the grim imagery, the drinking and murder with fun characters and looking for treasure to appeal to both younger and older audiences. Hence as a whole this was still quite an enjoyable read (minus the racism of course).