Jolly Roger - Softcover

McNaughton, Colin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0744582938 ISBN 13: 9780744582932

Publisher: Walker Books Ltd, 2001

Synopsis

An award-winning, comical pirate pictue book adventure! Nine-year-old Roger is a miserable landlubber with a bad-tempered mother. So when he sees a chance to join some pirates, he jumps at the chance - or he would have done if the pirates hadn't already bagged him! The next thing he knows, Roger is on board the "Golden Behind" with a bunch of the smelliest, hairiest, scariest pirates the world has ever seen - but will they be a match for Roger's mum?; Winner of the British Book Awards Children's Book of the Year Award.; Shortlisted for the Smarties Book Prize, the Kurt Maschler Award and the National Art Library Awards for Illustration.

About this title

About the Author:

Colin McNaughton is an award-winning author, illustrator and renowned poet. His titles for Walker Books include "Have You Seen Who's Just Moved in Next Door to Us?" (Winner of the Kurt Maschler Award), "Captain Abdul's Pirate School" and many poetry collections. Colin is married with two sons and lives in London.

From School Library Journal:

Grade 2-4-- A potentially delightful story line falters amid the burdensome text, the intermittent stream of consciousness by the narrator, and the sneering portrayal of a shrewish mother deserving of chastisement from males. A miserable boy, Jolly Roger, yearns to run away from his mean, sour mother and join the pirates. Surprisingly, he gets press-ganged (pirate talk for kidnapped) and finds himself exactly where he wants to be--among the rough, bristly, pirate band of Abdul the Skinhead. Watercolor and pen-and-ink paintings of the pirate personalities abound. They are appropriately gruesome, hideously frightening, and amusingly appealing. However, the excessive pirate lingo conversations border on the incomprehensible. Throughout the adventure, the omnipresent narrator regales readers with his observations. An example of this sophomoric intervention is his sexist comment that if you can't guess what the figurehead on the Golden Behind ship is, he won't tell you because "it's far too rude." The story continues with Mom capturing and retraining the pirates while Jolly Roger is trying to rescue them from her. During this derring-do, Mom accidently drops a bucket on an amnesiac pirate. This knock to the head causes him to regain his memory and recognize his now-happy wife and son. The two males then follow Mom's orders. --Ellen Dibner, East School, Long Beach, N.Y.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Walker Books Ltd
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0744582938
• ISBN 13: 9780744582932
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 64