Treasure Island (by Robert Louis Stevenson)

When an old pirate staying at his family's seaside inn dies, young Jim Hawkins discovers that he left behind a map showing the location of buried pirate treasure. When Jim shows it to the local squire, he buys and outfits a ship and, with Jim and the local doctor, they set sail to seek the treasure. But the dead pirate's shipmates, led by the charming and magnetic Long John Silver, want the treasure too, and will stop at nothing to get it -- including infiltrating the crew.

Reading this greatest of all children's adventure tales will make you realize how low so much of children's literature has sunk. This has everything you'd want in a book for kids: a mesmerizing story, brilliantly literary writing style, terrific characters (including one of the greatest characters in literature, the charming villain Long John Silver), rich settings, and the most stalwart and upstanding values presented in the most attractive and appealing way. Jim's bravery and daring are inseparable from his honesty and rectitude. This ordinary boy who rises to the occasion with grit and gallantry makes virtue the essential aspect of heroism. There are few moments in literature as thrilling as when Jim turns down a chance to escape torture and death because he has given his word.

Stevenson, who obviously had great respect for his young readers, doesn't pull his punches when it comes to vocabulary and sentence structure -- young readers may need some help. But the ideal introduction to this classic is as a read-aloud -- don't miss the chance to share this with your children. There are a gazillion versions: stay away from the various adaptations and abridgments and give your children the gift of the original, preferably in a beautifully illustrated edition. You can't do better than N. C. Wyeth, if you can find it in a used bookstore or online. In more than 125 years this book hasn't dated at all -- it's just as exciting and relevant as ever, and its bracingly clear morality is a tonic in troubled times.

From the Book:
The paper had been sealed in several places with a thimble by way of seal; the very thimble, perhaps, that I had found in the captain's pocket. The doctor opened the seals with great care, and there fell out the map of an island, with latitude and longitude, soundings, names of hills and bays and inlets, and every particular that would be needed to bring a ship to a safe anchorage upon its shores. It was about nine miles long and five across, shaped, you might say, like a fat dragon standing up, and had two fine land-locked harbours, and a hill in the centre part marked "The Spy-glass." There were several additions of a later date, but above all, three crosses of red ink--two on the north part of the island, one in the southwest--and beside this last, in the same red ink, and in a small, neat hand, very different from the captain's tottery characters, these words: "Bulk of treasure here."