Adventure · Pirates
Treasure Island
A boy, a treasure map and a charming one-legged cook who may be the most dangerous pirate alive.
Five levels, about 80 languages
- A2ElementaryShort sentences and everyday words.
- B1IntermediateYou follow clear stories about familiar things.First edition written
- B2Upper intermediateLonger sentences, richer vocabulary.
- C1AdvancedClose to the original, lightly condensed.
- C2ProficientThe complete novel.
One purchase is one book, in one language, at one level: $4.99. Another level of a book you own is $1.99. Editions nobody has asked for yet are written on request: chapter 1 in a few minutes, the rest while you read. How the levels work.
IRead the first pages
Chapter 1, as Lexo prints it.
The real opening of Treasure Island in Arabic (B1), Spanish (B1), French (B1) and Albanian (B1). Tap any word for its meaning in the sentence, or press play to hear it read.
Edition
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Try this
- Tap a word
- Press play
- Turn the page
- Change the theme in Aa
La isla del tesoro
El viejo marinero en el Almirante Benbow
Chapter 1 of 34
Display
Book page. Use the left and right arrow keys to move from word to word, Enter to look up a word, Page Up and Page Down to turn pages, and the space bar to listen or pause.
About the book
A boy, a map and a ship’s cook
Jim Hawkins is helping at his mother’s inn on the English coast when an old sailor moves in with a sea chest and pays Jim to watch for a seafaring man with one leg. Within a few chapters Jim has a treasure map, a berth on the schooner Hispaniola, and a friend in the ship’s cook, Long John Silver: clever, cheerful and very hard to read. Robert Louis Stevenson published the novel in 1883, and pirate stories have borrowed from it ever since: the map marked with a cross, the parrot on the shoulder, the black spot.
Why it works in another language
Jim tells most of the story himself, one danger after another, so you always know where you are. Chapters are short and most end on a hook. The vocabulary is concrete and keeps coming back: ship, deck, mast, anchor, island, map, gold, rum. By the middle of the book those words are yours.
Silver is the reason to keep going. He talks his way into and out of everything, and his speeches are where the language is most alive. Lexo’s narration gives him and the rest of the crew their own voices, which makes long stretches of dialogue easy to follow by ear.
Which level to start at
Few classics survive simplification as well, because the plot carries everything. A2 is a fair start if you’ve finished a beginner course. B1 keeps more of the suspense and Silver’s double talk; it was one of the first editions Lexo wrote. At C1 and C2 you meet Stevenson’s sea language in full, and every rope and sail is a tap away.