Treasure Island

I recently read Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island with the idea that I might be able to recommend it to my niece and nephew in a couple years when they start reading books. For a so-called "children's classic," this thing had a bigger pile-up of corpses than the end of Hamlet. I was appalled. Granted, where pirates are concerned, I should have expected as much, but I thought for the "all ages" crowd there would be more emphasis on the adventure of the treasure hunt and less emphasis on the drunken, violent behavior of the pirates. I was completely wrong. Even Long John Silver with his peg leg and cute parrot turned out to be a double-dealing thug. Like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Treasure Island isn't really a children's book. It portrays the adult world as treacherous and dangerous at every turn. Whether this is something you would want to expose your kids to at an early age is debatable. My third grade teacher read Edgar Allen Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" to our class and not only did I never forget it, but it probably single-handedly turned me into a lifelong reader (and I seriously doubt a third grade teacher would be able to get away with that today). On second thought, maybe this extremely violent, ripping yarn is just what kids need. (A note to parents: Treasure Island contains lots of nautical terms that left this landlubber scratching his head a lot of the time. Be prepared to answer questions like "What's a bowsprit?" or "What's the lee-side?" or "What's the forecastle?" or "What's the after-deck?" or "What's a jib?" etc.)