18 Comments
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James Carran's avatar

I need to reread Treasure Island...

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Lisa Kuznak's avatar

Awesome review, as always!

Any recs for a kid obsessed with cowboys/westerns? I know you guys are the ones to ask!

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Frank Kidd's avatar

Yes. Louis L'Amour. Louis Lamour. Louis Lamour. Great representation of healthy masculinity. Besides violence, relatively clean. Basically adventure books that wear cowboy clothes. This almost all I exclusively read from like 5th grade until out of highschool. In fact, I still go back and read and reread them. Max Brand is pretty good, but the prose might be slightly more "old timey."

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Lisa Kuznak's avatar

Really! I thought Louis L'Amour was more adult (not like, Adult adult, but you know what I mean.) This is great because my local used bookstore has around 3000 Louis L'Amour books. Awesome, thank you!

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Frank Kidd's avatar

Yeah, they are pretty safe and based to be honest. Quite a few have romance subplots but never explicit sex scenes. Awesome books. Finding Louis Lamour as a young man was life changing. Dude is probably the inspiration for me wanting to write tbh.

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Lisa Kuznak's avatar

Aw that's so cool! I'll take him to pick out books this weekend.

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Zack Grafman's avatar

From the (relatively few) examples I've read, nothing out of the reach of a healthy kid with a good reading level.

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Frank Theodat's avatar

Oh man, Frank Kidd is your point person for this. He knows the genre the best.

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Dustin Buck's avatar

The Great Illustrated Classics series is a great intro for 8-10 year olds. I’m reading that version of Treasure Island to my 9 and 6 year old now.

They are simple enough to digest the story, with a quality illustration on every page, and cover all the classics (Verne, Dumas, Wells, etc). I read em all when I was small, which led to me reading the real versions later in jr high and high school. Great pulp primers for based boys

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Zack Grafman's avatar

I seem to remember these…white and red covers??

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Dustin Buck's avatar

https://a.co/d/4fj5CQ0

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Zack Grafman's avatar

YESSSS

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Dustin Buck's avatar

Yep, white covers with red titles on the spine

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Jenn's avatar

Thank you for this series! I have a boy who is just learning to love reading.

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Zack Grafman's avatar

Happy to provide the service!

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Philip “Big Philly” Smith's avatar

A grown man would do well to revisit this “kids” book instead of watching Marvel kids movies. Boom, I said it. Fuck it.

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Aidan Van Horn's avatar

Such a classic. I re-read Treasure island more times than I could count as a kid.

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Fredösphere's avatar

Thanks for this. Treasure Island is the perfect Boys' Own Adventure novel.

I really benefited from reading it in this edition, which has just the right amount of helpful notes in the margins:

https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/treasure-island-by-robert-lewis-stevenson-classic-press-intl-1968-edition/38378791/item/55861766/#edition=66323044&idiq=55861766

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