Guest Blogger: My daughter Hannah Detweiler

My Daughter just recently read Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson and I had her write a book report about it. 

Warning:  Book Report contains spoilers 

   Treasure Island is a story about an innkeeper’s son named Jim Hawkins. His father and mother run an inn called the Admiral Benbow Inn. Everything is nice and calm until one day an old seaman who calls himself “The Captain” but is really named Billy Bones comes along and makes quite a nuisance of himself.


He’s loud all the time, singing an old pirate song and expecting everyone to sing along with him. He doesn’t pay for his stay at the inn, and he also drinks ALOT…like more than Captain Jack Sparrow and his whole crew! But that’s not important at the moment.

Bones pays Jim a few cents every week to keep an eye out for seafaring men, and to warn him if he sees one with a wooden leg. A few months later, a man by the name “Black Dog” shows up. Their meeting turns into a fight, and Bones has a stroke (because of stress and all his drinking) while Black Dog gets away.

While Jim takes care of Bones, he confesses that he’s hiding from his old crew and they want his sea chest.

A while later, another of men from his crew named Pew, who is blind, comes and forces Jim to lead him to Billy Bones. When Pew gets to the inn, and comes to Bones, he gives him a paper, and leaves.

Bones opens the paper to see that it has The Black Spot on it, which is a pirate thing where it means you have until 10 o clock to do what the people that gave the said ‘spot’ want. When he saw this, Bones drops dead from another heart attack.

Jim and his mother open Bones' sea chest to collect the amount needed for Bones' room and rent, but before they can count out the money that they are due, they hear pirates coming to the inn and are forced to run away and hide, Jim taking with him a weird oilskin packet from the chest. The pirates, led by Pew, find the sea chest and the money, but are mad that the chest does not contain "Flint's fist." Revenue agents approach and the pirates escape to their ship, except for Blind Pew, who is accidentally run down and killed by the agents' coach and horses.

Jim Hawkins comes to the house of local landlord Squire Trelawney and his mother's friend Dr. Livesey. Together, they look at the oilskin pouch, which contains a logbook explaining the treasure was stolen during Captain Flint's career, and a detailed map of an island, with the location of Flint's treasure marked on it. Squire Trelawney immediately plans to get a ship to hunt the treasure down, with the help of Dr. Livesey and Jim. Livesey tells Trelawney to keep quiet about their plans.

Going to Bristol, Trelawney buys a ship named Hispaniola, hires a Captain named Smollett to command it, and also gets Long John Silver, owner of "The Spy-glass" tavern and a former sea cook, to run the ships kitchen. Silver helps Trelawney to hire the rest of his crew. When Jim comes to Bristol and visits Silver at the Spy Glass tavern, his suspicions are immediately alerted: Silver is missing a leg, like the man Bones warned about, and Black Dog is sitting in the tavern. Black Dog runs away at the sight of Jim, and Silver says he doesn’t know the fugitive so convincingly that he wins Jim's trust.

In spite of Captain Smollett's misgivings about the mission and Silver's hand-picked crew, the Hispaniola gets going to the Caribbean Sea. As they get closer to their destination, Jim climbs into the ship's apple barrel to get some apples. While inside, he hears Silver talking secretly with some of the other crewmen. Silver admits that he was Captain Flint's quartermaster and that several of the other crew were also once Flint's men, and he is getting more men from the crew to his own side. After Flint's treasure is found, Silver means to kill the Hispaniola's officers, and keep the treasure for himself and his men. When the pirates have gone back to their places, Jim warns Smollett, Trelawney, and Livesey of the nearing mutiny.

As soon as they reached the Treasure Island, most of Silvers men got off right away and went to shore. Even though Jim wasn’t aware of it, Silvers men had given him the black spot, and wanted to get the treasure right away and not go with the plan to hide the mutiny and or violence until after they got the treasure but instead just wanted to get it at all costs. So Jim goes with the crew to shore, but runs away as soon as he possibly can. While he hides in the woods he sees Silver kill a guy named tom, who was loyal to captain Smollett. While he runs for his life, he runs into a man by the name of Ben Gunn, who has been marooned on the island for three years, another of flints old crewmen, but this one treats Jim nicely for a chance to return home with Jim and the good guys.

In the meantime, Trelawney, Livesey, and their men surprise and over take the few pirates left on the ship. They row to shore and move into an old stockade on the island, where they are soon joined by Jim Hawkins, since he left Ben Gunn behind. Silver comes to them under a flag of truce and tries to negotiate Smollett's surrender; Smollett refuses him totally, and Silver gets really super mad saying he’s going to attack the stockade. "Them that die'll be the lucky ones," he says as he stomps off. The pirates attack the stockade, but are kept back in a mean battle.

During the night, Jim sneaks out of the stockade, takes Ben Gunn's small boat thing and goes to the ship while it was still dark. He cuts the ship's anchor cable, setting it adrift and out of reach of the pirates on shore. After dawn, he manages to approach the ship again and board it. Of the two pirates left aboard, only one is still alive: the coxswain, Israel Hands, who has killed the other guy in a drunken fight, and been badly hurt himself while doing so. Hands agrees to help Jim take the ship to a safe beach in exchange for medical treatment and alcohol, but once the ship is nearing the beach, Hands tries to kill Jim. Jim escapes him by climbing the rigging, and when Hands tries to stab him with a dirk, Jim shoots Hands dead.

Having beached the Hispaniola securely, Jim returns to the stockade while its night time and still dark and sneaks back inside. Because of the darkness, he does not realize until too late that the stockade is now occupied by the pirates, and he is easily captured. Silver, whose command has been continually questioned and has become more tenuous than ever, captures Jim as a hostage, refusing his men's demands to kill him or torture him for information.

Silver's rivals in the pirate crew, led by George Merry, again give Silver the Black Spot and move to take him away from being captain. Silver rebukes them for ruining a page from the Bible to create the Black Spot and reveals that he has gotten the map to the treasure from Dr. Livesey, in turn restoring the crew's confidence in him. The following day, the pirates search for the treasure. They are followed by Ben Gunn, who makes ghostly sounds to scare them from continuing, but Silver storms ahead and finds the place where Flint's treasure was buried. The pirates discover that the place has searched and all of the treasure is gone.

The mad pirates turn on Silver and Jim, but Ben Gunn, Dr. Livesey and his men attack the pirates by surprise, killing two and scattering the rest. Silver surrenders to Dr. Livesey, promising to return to his duty. They go to Ben Gunn's cave home, where Gunn has had the treasure hidden for months. The treasure is divided among Trelawney and his loyal men, including Jim and Ben Gunn, and they return to England, leaving the surviving pirates marooned on the island. Silver escapes with the help of the scared Ben Gunn and a small part of the treasure.