‘Tusitala: The Life of R.L.S.’

As Lou grew older and was able to go to high school and college, he started to meet people outside his family. The people he liked best were the poor and downtrodden. He felt that life was unfair. People who were poor or unlucky in life didn’t have the opportunities of those who had money and power. He hated to see them punished for crimes he thought were caused by their horrible childhoods. His father disagreed with him and couldn’t understand why his son preferred being friends with poor, shabby people instead of going to formal parties and associating with people of his class.

To please his father, Stevenson went to the University of Edinburgh and studied engineering, but he very soon knew he didn’t want to build lighthouses. He wanted to be a writer. It was the only thing he wanted to do. He was sorry to disappoint his father, but he just didn’t like engineering.

Besides writing, Stevenson loved to travel. Despite his delicate health, he took long hikes, canoe trips on wild waters and a journey on a donkey called Modestine, “a headstrong and willful beast who snorted and laid back her ears,” he wrote about her. Most of the time, he went where Modestine wanted to go. After the trip he wrote one of his most famous books, “Travels With a Donkey in the Cevennes.”

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Thursday: Lou writes one of the world’s most famous children’s books.

This story will be on The Times’ Web site at www.latimes.com/kids.