By Robert Louis Stevenson
The original pirate adventure — a treasure map, a mutiny at sea, and Long John Silver, the villain every pirate since has copied.
Young Jim Hawkins helps run his family's seaside inn when a battered old sailor turns up, drinks hard, and dies — leaving behind a map to buried pirate gold. Jim sails off with the squire and the local doctor to go dig it up, and the ship's one-legged cook, Long John Silver, is easily the friendliest man aboard. He's also a pirate. Most of the crew are his men, and they mean to mutiny the moment the treasure's in reach. From there it's a stockade under siege on the island, a knife fight up in the ship's rigging, the black spot passed hand to hand, and Jim stuck between the honest men and the most charming liar in the book. The maps, the parrot, the pieces of eight — a lot of what you picture when you picture pirates started here.
This is the one for the older child who wants a real adventure with some danger in it. It's the book that set the whole idea of pirates in everyone's head, and it holds up — Silver is a genuinely great character, warm and deadly at the same time, and Jim is easy to climb right inside of. A hardcover with N. C. Wyeth's famous painted plates is a lovely thing to own and pass down. Fair warning, though: it's the oldest and roughest book on this shelf. Men actually die in it, so it suits a nine-to-twelve-year-old who's ready for real peril more than a younger, more tender reader.