In celebration of School Library Journal presenting SummerTeen: A Celebration of Young Adult Books this Thursday, August 9 we will be featuring a YA appropriate title each day this week.
SummerTeen is an online event that will give you the early word on new books and emerging trends in young adult literature, more details below. The online conference will take place on August 9 from 10:30am-5:30pm EDT. Join acclaimed authors Caroline B. Cooney (Janice Face to Face), Karen Thompson Walker (The Age of Miracles), Lurlene McDaniel (Red Heart Tattoo), and Michael Grant (BZRK), as well as 18 other authors as they discuss their forthcoming titles to help you kick start your fall collections. Click here to register. Enter our special discount rate code (SMRTNRH) for 50% off registration. This code can be entered during the checkout process.
Today we’d like to talk about Silver: Return to Treasure Island by Andrew Motion. A rip-roaring sequel to Treasure Island—Robert Louis Stevenson’s beloved classic—about two young friends and their high-seas adventure with dangerous pirates and long-lost treasure.
It’s almost forty years after the events of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island: Jim Hawkins now runs an inn called the Hispaniola on the English coast with his son, Jim, and Long John Silver has returned to England to live in obscurity with his daughter, Natty. Their lives are quiet and unremarkable; their adventures have seemingly ended.
But for Jim and Natty, the adventure is just beginning. One night, Natty approaches young Jim with a proposition: return to Treasure Island and find the remaining treasure that their fathers left behind so many years before. As Jim and Natty set sail in their fathers’ footsteps, they quickly learn that this journey will not be easy. Immediately, they come up against murderous pirates, long-held grudges, and greed and deception lurking in every corner. And when they arrive on Treasure Island, they find terrible scenes awaiting them—difficulties which require all their wit as well as their courage. Nor does the adventure end there, since they have to sail homeward again…
Andrew Motion’s sequel—rollicking, heartfelt, and utterly brilliant—would make Robert Louis Stevenson proud.
*** Read an Silver excerpt here.
Praise from the UK for Silver
“Elegant, affectionate homage to Robert Louis Stevenson … A piece of writing born of genuine love and respect for the original.” —The Sunday Times
“Deeply pleasing and convivial. . . . As with Treasure Island, Silver is left open to the possibility of its own sequel, and surely no one would wish Motion to swallow the anchor.” —The Guardian
“[Silver] reeks of authenticity, cunning, intrigue, suspense and adventure. It’s brilliant, and for all ages.” —Daily Mirror
“[Motion] reinvents Stevenson’s world to reveal its dark underside, illuminating both its mysterious beauty and its grim immortality. . . . Stands in its own right as a companion volume to a literary classic” —The Observer
“[An] elegant, thrilling sequel. . . . Motion’s prose, vivid and glowingly poetic, is a brilliant counterpoint to the fascinating action.” —The Daily Mail