Treasure Island

August 31, 2009
Tim Gregory captures the essence of this classic coming-of-age tale featuring villainous buccaneers, buried treasure, murder, treachery and adventure on the high seas. We follow the exploits of young Jim Hawkins along his voyage for treasure aboard the Hispaniola
to his showdown with the villain Long John Silver on Treasure Island. Gregory introduces a host of uniquely rendered characters, with Silver and his pirates matching wits and weapons with Hawkins and his comrades as they battle for control of Treasure Island and a share of Captain Flint's long lost treasure. Gregory's rendering of the iconic characters—particularly the duplicitous Silver and the marooned and raving Ben Gunn—are nuanced, true to the text and utterly enjoyable. He avoids the easy clichés of the pirate genre and instead portrays complex characters in a performance that will delight listeners of all ages.

June 1, 2010

"Woohoo. Treasure Island, here we come!" So crows young Jim Hawkins in this notably lame and jumbled graphic adaptation of Stevenson's classic. Crowding variously sized panels and sometimes-misplaced dialogue balloons atop one another, Kohlrus illustrates the tale with jumbles of generally static figures in ragged (but apparently freshly laundered) clothing and scenes of hard-to-follow action. The sound-bite dialogue is largely incidental to Jim's severely truncated narrative, which is broken up into multiple captions on every page, includes unnecessary footnotes ("The Dry Tortugas are a small group of islands in the Gulf of Mexico") and gives the whole outing a feeling of being told rather than shown. No competition for the robust adaptations of Tim Hamilton (2005) or Roy Thomas (2008), nor does it measure up to the standards set by the same publisher's adaptation of Moby Dick, adapted by Lance Stahlberg and illustrated by Lalit Kumar Singh (ISBN: 978-93-80028-22-4). (Graphic fiction. 11-13)

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October 5, 2009
Stevenson’s prototypical swashbuckling story receives a traditional treatment in this unabridged, oversize version. Lawrence evokes the essence of classic adventure stories with his vinyl-cut illustrations, as thick black shapes are tempered by muted tones of blue, gold and green. The grimacing faces of pirates are appropriately blemished and begrimed, elegant vessels are seen moored under a starry sky and the island’s wild intrigue is captured in subtle, grainy glimpses. As they follow Jim Hawkins to sea, readers will feel they’ve discovered a true relic with this edition. Ages 9–14.

July 1, 2003
The Scribner Storybook Classic line adds Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, abridged by Timothy Meis, with vintage illustrations by N.C. Wyeth. Young Jim Hawkins finds a treasure map and follows it to South America, only to wind up in the hands of the notorious pirate Long John Silver. Climactic scenes of aggressive mutineers or the hero's valiant attempt to keep the evil Mr. Hands at bay come alive in Wyeth's atmospheric oil paintings.