Good Pirate, Bad Pirate

Robert Louis Stevenson is the author of Treasure Island, The Black Arrow, Kidnapped, A Child’s Garden of Verses, the deliciously creepy The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde based on a real person, and much more. You can learn more about him here.

Pirate in disguise

In Treasure Island, young Jim Hawkins is warned to be on the lookout for and avoid “the seafaring man with one leg.” Yet when he meets a sailor with one leg named Long John Silver, Hawkins is not troubled. Why?

First, he’s had a letter from his friend the squire claiming that Long John Silver is a war veteran who lost his leg “in his country’s service.” Next, when he meets Silver for himself, Silver seems “clean and pleasant-tempered.” Here is the paragraph where Jim Hawkins meets the truly nasty Long John Silver who, at the moment, doesn’t seem so nasty:

HIGH SCHOOL PROMPTS

Are you ready for NaNoWriMo?

Would you like to be?

Write a Novel

NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month in which people sign up to write a novel in the month of November. (They obviously are not the ones cooking the turkey. Just saying.)

You can read more about NaNoWriMo here and here. Both sites will show you how to organize your writing days and give you tips on how to begin and complete that novel.

Write a Picture Book

Or maybe you are more interested in writing a picture book. Do you remember a favorite picture book from your youth? Would you like to have some fun at creating fun titles for one? Storystorm encourages writers to “create 30 story ideas in 30 days.”