My second mistake was forgetting that just because a book has a plot that happens to be accessible to children doesn’t necessarily imply that it is short of deeper meaning – as anyone who’s read The Prince and the Pauper, Tom Sawyer, or Gulliver’s Travels can attest. I can only assume that versions of this story actually intended for children are *heavily* edited to translate the almost indecipherable dialect into modern idiom. So far so good, except that I defy any child alive to decipher this book in its original form which - Kipling proudly assures us in the forward - authentically reproduces the rich, idiosyncratic vocabulary of actual Gloucester fishermen, a dialect so obscure that it required all of my grown-up background knowledge and faculties to decipher.

In true Boy’s Life fashion, Harvey quickly learns the value of hard work and comes to respect the simple, honest, courageous crew of the trawler. Not believing his “high-falootin’” tales of wealth, the captain of the trawler refuses to interrupt his passage to drop Harvey ashore, instead putting him to work as part of the crew. Sure enough, the first 2/3rds of the tale are devoted to the adventures of Harvey, a spoiled, wealthy 13yr old boy travelling across the Atlantic on a ritzy ocean liner who falls overboard and is picked up by a cod-fishing trawler. Postponed reading this for years because I had this preconceived notion that it was a “children’s classic” – heavy on adventure, light on deeper meaning.

Captains Courageous by Rudyard Kipling