Mom's Notes: This has been on my "To Read" list for years. We did it! It's a true adventure story, and we were shocked at the dirty deeds of the pirates and impressed by the bravery of Jim. Learning a little history of Stevenson's life and inspiration for the book was especially interesting, as was looking up some pirate phrases and slang. It wasn't until the last few chapters that I thought to print out a labeled diagram of a ship - that would've been extremely useful to study before reading! A list of pirate vocabulary and translation was fun and helpful too.