Six Children’s Books About Pirates

Ahoy there! Today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day, so shiver me timbers, I’ve picked out six scurvy-dog books about pirates to enjoy with your kids. But first, a joke. What do you call a pirate with three eyes? A piiirate! I’m not sorry.

Six Children’s Books About Pirates

The Pirates Next Door by Jonny Duddle. When a pirate family, the Jolley-Rogers, move to a quiet seaside town, the whole neighbourhood starts gossiping about them and spreading rumours. Matilda who lives next door to the Jolley-Rogers becomes friends with the youngest pirate son. When the Jolley-Rogers leave, the town discovers they were wrong to assume the worst of this pirate crew.

Six Children's Books About Pirates

Pirates Love Underpants by Claire Freedman. If you enjoyed Monsters Love Underpants and Dinosaurs Love Underpants, then you’ll love Pirates Love Underpants. It follows the same colourful, rhyming style and every page has something to giggle about. This is a brilliant, funny picture book for pre-schoolers!

Pirate Pete’s Talk Like a Pirate by Kim Kennedy. This is the sequel to the popular Pirate Pete book. This time Pete is in search of a crew for his new ship. He needs people who behave like a pirate but also talk like a pirate. Pirate Pete interviews several candidates, but can they talk like a proper pirate? This is the perfect book for International Talk Like a Pirate Day!

Winnie’s Pirate Adventure by Valerie Thomas. This piratey installment of the Winnie the Witch books tells a great pirate tale. Winnie and her black cat, Wilbur are off to a fancy-dress party. Winnie is going as a pirate and Wilbur is her parrot. At the party they find a whole crew of little pirates ready to set sail on the high seas, so off they go on a swashbuckling adventure! Ahoy there!

Jack and the FlumFlum Tree by Julia Donaldson. This is a lovely book to read aloud with your child. Jack’s Granny is sick with a bad case of the moozles! AThe only cure is the fruit of the fantastic flumflum tree which grows on the faraway Isle of Blowyernose. It’s a treacherous journey, but Jack sets sail, with his motley crew of three and a large patchwork sack that Granny has filled with things to help them along the way. Will they succeed in their mission?

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stephenson. The original and best book about pirates – Treasure Island! With peg-legged pirates, colorful parrots, and plundered riches this seafaring adventure is bound to thrill any pirate fan! When young Jim Hawkins decides to follow a map to buried treasure, he must befriend or outsmart memorable characters such as pirate Long John Silver, captain Billy Bones, and island man Ben Gunn. Mutinous plans, mysterious deaths, and a tangle of double crosses keep Jim guessing all the way to the prize.

If you enjoyed this, you might also like our five books about dinosaurs or five books about bears.

Six Children's Books About Pirates

Book Review: Pirate Ship Sticker Book, Carlton Books

Being the mum of a five year old boy, I know there are several things in life which make him incredibly happy. Superheroes, Star Wars and Pirates are top of his list. Throw in some stickers and you know you’re onto a very good thing. When the new Pirate Ship Sticker Book from Carlton Books landed on our doormat, I suspected I’d have a very happy boy on my hands.

The Pirate Ship Sticker Book is more than just a basic sticker book. It has 23 pages of pirate facts, information and scenes to sticker, as well as over 150 reusable stickers and 16 pages of pirate activities including colouring in. Plus a treasure map, spot the misfits and a design your own galleon activity. Within the pages of this book you can explore the Scurvy Dog pirate ship, which is home to Captain Skull and his rascally crew of salty sea-dogs!

Pirate Ship Sticker Book

There’s quite a lot of reading in this Pirate Ship Sticker Book, considering it’s a sticker book. We enjoyed reading it together at bedtime, sticking the stickers in the right places and talking about pirate life and what it must have been like to live on a pirate ship.

Pirate Ship Sticker Book

The book is really colourfully illustrated by Maria Taylor, with lots of attention to detail. You really get the sense that pirate ships were fairly unpleasant and smelly places to be. We especially liked that you could really enhance the pirate scene with stickers and the small boy loved to see which sticker went where.

Pirate Ship Sticker Book

Written by Claire Sipi and Jim Pipe, the Pirate Ship Sticker Book is packed full of information about pirate life. Mostly these are in short paragraphs alongside accompanying illustrations. These made for really useful talking points, we’d read the text and then discuss what we’d read and what was going on in the picture.

Pirate Ship Sticker Book

We buy these kind of books a lot for the small boy, he enjoys sticker books and they’re good to take out when we go out for a meal or something. I think it’s a very well designed book, there’s lots to read, do and discuss. The boy has really enjoyed reading it with me and doing the activities.

I feel like it’s given the boy a more in-depth understanding of pirates than previously. He still arrrrrrs and tries to get me to walk the plank, but now he’s talking more about day to day pirate life on the Scurvy Dog, which to me is the beginnings of an interest and understanding of history.

There was nothing we didn’t like about the book. The small boy is nearly six and I would say that 5 is about the minimum age for this book; the reading is a little hard for him so we are reading it together.

Other sticker books in the series include Doll’s House, Castle and Princess Palace. I’d like to see more, the Pirate Ship Sticker Book was fab.

The Pirate Ship Sticker Book is just £5.99 and is published on 6th October 2016.

Note: We were sent the Pirate Ship Sticker Book for review purposes. All images and opinions are our own.

Review: Sleepover fun with Snuggle Sac

This week the small boy had his first sleepover. His slightly older cousin came over for the night and the excitement was palpable. In anticipation of the event we were sent a Pirate Snuggle Sac from Ollie and Leila to try out, and boy did we put it through its paces!

The Snuggle Sac is a cozy sleeping bag which is made of fleece with a 100% cotton lining. We chose the pirate one because who doesn’t love pirates. But they come in a wide range of designs including Harry Potter, lions, dogs and fairies etc. They are designed to look a bit like dressing up costumes, so you can pretend to be a pirate whilst you’re curled up for a sleep.

sac5

The Snuggle Sac measures 180cm x 70cm and is the perfect size for my five year old, leaving lots of room for him to grow into over the years.

What I particularly like about it is there is a pouch for you to slip in a pillow. The pillow doesn’t go walkies in the night, something which used to really annoy me when I was in sleeping bags as a child. There is your standard sleeping bag zip along one side and pirate feet hanging off the bottom. It’s lots of fun.

Snuggle Sac

The Snuggle Sac comes in its own tote bag, which is great for packing it away when it’s not in use. Although it’s been designed to be used both for camping trips and sleepovers and to replace normal bedding, I think we’ll be using it a lot over the summer for our holidays and for sleepovers. We’re off to the Just So Festival in August, so this will be perfect for then.

Snuggle Sac

We unpacked the Snuggle Sac and the boys went bonkers for it. They loved it and couldn’t wait to try it out. At bedtime we took it upstairs and made a bed on the floor for his cousin, tucked a pillow into the pouch, zipped him up and he soon nodded off. Perfect. Well at least the Snuggle Sac was perfect.

Snuggle Sac

Near midnight, after a bout of coughing cousin Joe was sick on himself, his cuddly toy and the Snuggle Sac (see, I told you we put it through its paces!). So his bed was stripped and the Snuggle Sac washed and hung out to dry. I have to say it washed really well and dried pretty quickly on a sunny day.

It was a shame it didn’t make it through the night, but we know it works, is popular and importantly when dealing with small sticky boys, it washes really well. I know my boy will want to sleep in it tonight and for the next few nights, but then we’ll pack it away in its tote bag ready for our holiday.

Snuggle Sac

The Snuggle Sacs cost £45 here and I think they are lovely fun sleeping bag for kids. They also do adult versions (though sadly not in pirate designs) and Snuggle Sacs for smaller children and babies. I think if you’re planning a family camping trip, or you have lots of sleepovers coming up, these are a great sleeping solution. We love ours!

Note: We were sent a Snuggle Sac for review purposes. All images and opinions are our own.

Exploring the Wrecks of Westward Ho!

We’ve been visiting the beach at Westward Ho! for many years. It’s a stunning beach, around two miles of lovely sand, popular with surfers and a great beach for collecting shells. Like most beaches on the North Devon coast its character can often be changed by the winter (and summer) storms; the fierce waves shifting the stones and sand, hiding and revealing features.

When we last visited Westward Ho! in June 2014 there was nothing of particular interest to note, it was the same as it’s always been, sandy and flat, with a bank of stones against the shore. In February 2015 it was at first glance the same. We took a stroll along the beach hoping to collect some nice shells to take back to school when I spotted some pieces of wood sticking out from the sand.

I was really curious about what they were and they seemed to be attracting attention, so we walked over to have a closer look. What we found was the ancient hull of what is thought to be a barge trading on the Bristol Channel, but has also known locally as a ‘Viking Ship’ or ‘Spanish Galleon’, we called it a ‘Pirate Ship’ because the small boy is currently obsessing about pirates.

The wreck is an oak-framed vessel which is around 25 metres long and 7 metres wide. It is thought that the wreck could be one of two boats wrecked nearby, the ‘Salisbury’ of London, lost in March 1759 on Northam Burrows or the ‘Sally’ of Bristol, which was wrecked on Northam Sands in September 1769.

This large wreck isn’t visible very often, so it was a real privilege to be able to see it. It’s usually buried deep in the sand and it might be a number of years before we get to see it again. I took the opportunity to take some pictures of it for prosperity.

Westward Ho

A bit further along the beach we came across another wreck, this was much smaller than the first, measuring just over 15 metres in length. The remains of the wreck were not as complete as the first. This wreck is thought to date from the late 18th or early 19th century and is likely to be a Polacca Brig, a style of sailing boat which was used to trade limestone, coal and other goods across the North Devon coast, Taw Estuary and to the Bristol Channel.

Somewhere under Westward Ho! beach lies a third wreck, but that hadn’t been revealed to us by the shifting sands. We felt incredibly lucky to have seen the two skeleton wrecks which had been uncovered over the winter months and we’re hoping to visit again later in the year to see if they are still visible or not.

Note: All images are my own, they must not be used elsewhere without my written permission.