Here are 86 books that How I Became a Pirate fans have personally recommended if you like
How I Became a Pirate.
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I am the author of over twenty books for children, including National Bestseller Unicorn Day and the sequel, Unicorn Night: Sleep Tight, as well as Help Mom Work From Home!, Goodnight Veggies (a Jr. Library Guild Selection), and One Snowy Day. My poems have appeared in many anthologies and children’s magazines, such as Highlights and Spider. I grew up in New York City and still live nearby with my firefighter husband, two children, and a dancing dog.
Who could resist a story about chicken pirates in a hot air balloon ship? This outrageous tale of adventure is sure to hold kids’ attention and make them laugh. Sensible, cautious Henry the bunny continues writing in his book despite the other pirates’ protests that writing is a pointless activity. In the end, he saves the day and changes their minds, thus delivering a message (in a fun way) about the importance of reading and writing.
BOWK! Buccaneers and book lovers will squawk with laughter as Henry and his hare-brained crew face another high-seas adventure. Now in paperback. (Ages 4-8)
Barnacle Black Ear and his band of Buccaneer Bunnies are back! The floppy-eared scallywags are busy — shooting one another out of cannons; swinging from the masts of their ship — too busy to listen when Henry finds a threatening message in a bottle. While Henry works frantically on his book mapping out a plan, his mates bowl with coconuts or dig for treasure, and his father, Black Ear, bellows that Henry is wasting his time.…
I am the author of over twenty books for children, including National Bestseller Unicorn Day and the sequel, Unicorn Night: Sleep Tight, as well as Help Mom Work From Home!, Goodnight Veggies (a Jr. Library Guild Selection), and One Snowy Day. My poems have appeared in many anthologies and children’s magazines, such as Highlights and Spider. I grew up in New York City and still live nearby with my firefighter husband, two children, and a dancing dog.
Kids will enjoy the captain's search for the perfect pet and all the "commotion" the pirates cause wherever they go, "as good pirates should". A visit to the zoo lets the captain cross "peg leg" off his pirate checklist, thanks to a lion (the scene is handled in a humorous way without being scary). And the "poop deck" pun at the end (naughty parrot!) is sure to have everyone laughing
Ahoy! Pirates, pets, and puns run amok as a sea captain takes off on a mad search for the perfect animal sidekick.
Big, brave Captain Crave can check off most items on the Perfect Pirate checklist. He has a pirate ship, an eye patch, courage and daring, and more. Only one thing is missing: Captain Crave doesn't have a pet. Arrr! Shuck me an oyster and set sail for land! The captain and his crew race and chase critters of every size and shape, from the beach to a farm to the zoo to a pet shop, causing a commotion…
I am the author of over twenty books for children, including National Bestseller Unicorn Day and the sequel, Unicorn Night: Sleep Tight, as well as Help Mom Work From Home!, Goodnight Veggies (a Jr. Library Guild Selection), and One Snowy Day. My poems have appeared in many anthologies and children’s magazines, such as Highlights and Spider. I grew up in New York City and still live nearby with my firefighter husband, two children, and a dancing dog.
With bouncy rhyming text (extra points for the unique rhyme scheme!), this one makes for a fun read-aloud. Pirates and dinos are a winning combination and it’s a nice touch that Captain Rex is female. The main character is a small dino that kids will relate to and root for, and there is a nice underlying message of cooperation.
We're Pirasaurs! We're Pirasaurs! We rule the open seas! We'll cannon-blast you to the past! We do just what we please!
Meet the Pirasaurs, a ragtag team of seasoned pirate dinosaurs looking for adventure and treasure! There's fearsome Captain Rex, golden-toothed Velocimate, one-eyed Bronto Beard, and more fearsome, buccaneering beasts....as well as one new recruit who may be small, but who's eager to prove he can learn the ropes and find his place on the team.
But when a trap is set upon the Pirasaurs while looking for buried treasure, it's up to the littlest recruit to show the team…
I am the author of over twenty books for children, including National Bestseller Unicorn Day and the sequel, Unicorn Night: Sleep Tight, as well as Help Mom Work From Home!, Goodnight Veggies (a Jr. Library Guild Selection), and One Snowy Day. My poems have appeared in many anthologies and children’s magazines, such as Highlights and Spider. I grew up in New York City and still live nearby with my firefighter husband, two children, and a dancing dog.
This hilarious story is an early reader rather than a picture book, and it’s a great example of a children’s book that will also entertain adults. Pete’s conservative, well-mannered mom gets turned into a pirate by a hypnotist. Then she proceeds to fly a jolly roger flag over their house, tries to fight a neighbor, steals underwear off the clothesline, and screams at the PTA to “Give me yer loot!” It’s incredibly funny to see the extreme transformation and all the trouble that Pirate Mom causes when she is in a trance.
Join Pete, whose mom has been hypnotized to believe she's actually a pirate, on his adventure to get his mom to remember who she really is!
Yo ho ho! Pete loves pirates, but his mom thinks they are rude and messy. Then Pete and his mom go to see the Amazing Marco, and Marco hypnotizes Pete’s mom into thinking she’s a pirate! Now Pete’s mom won’t behave. She chases the neighbors. She steals underwear off other people’s clotheslines. She’s even flying the Jolly Roger over the house. Pete has to find the Amazing Marco. He wants his real mom back!
Let's face it: pirates of the Golden Age are just cool. No one would actually want to encounter them, but they have been the stuff of escapist dreams since childhood. Adventure, fellowship, treasure–the “romantic” aspects of piracy are what make these otherwise nasty individuals anti-heroes par excellence. As an adult and academic and as an occasional crewman on square riggers, I adopted pirates as a favorite sub-set of maritime history. As with other aspects of the past, I view the history of pirates and piracy as really two narratives: what the records tell us happened and why and what our persistent fascination with them reveals about us.
I like books that challenge longstanding but doubtful dogma and expose historical fallacies. This collection of essays does just that, and it quickly brought me up to speed on some of the best and latest studies about pirates and piracy.
More than a dozen essays by as many noted historians helped dispel my misconceptions concerning Blacks as pirates, the practices of piracy and privateering, the roles of women at the business end of piracy (booty is only good if you can sell it), and more.
Dispelling the romanticized myths surrounding pirates, Pennell's edited collection provides a corrective history of bandits at sea
The romantic fiction of pirates as swashbuckling marauders terrorizing the high seas has long eclipsed historical fact. Bandits at Sea offers a long-overdue corrective to the mythology and the mystique which has plagued the study of pirates and served to deny them their rightful legitimacy as subjects of investigation.
With essays by the foremost scholars on these countercultural "social bandits," as Lingua Franca recently dubbed them, this collection examines various aspects of the phenomenon in the three main areas where it occurred: the…
I have loved pirates since my first viewing of Mary Martin’s Peter Pan at age 5. My passion for learning about these outlaws led me to discover the hidden stories of women pirates—who have always sailed alongside their male counterparts yet never get the same glory. When I learned about Cheng I Sao, the greatest pirate who ever lived (who was a woman), I was so angry that her story wasn’t more well-known that I wrote a book about it! It has been a joy and an honor to share the stories of pirate women with the world and I have fully embraced my title of “crazy pirate lady.”
This new book is a great example of how women pirates continue to captivate and inspire us. Leigh Lewis has created a truly unique hybrid of a poetry collection and historical text which is unlike anything I’ve ever read before. It’s suitable for middle grade readers but enjoyable for all readers. I hope to see more from Leigh!
Move over Blackbeard and Captain Kidd! Did you know that the most powerful pirate who ever lived was a woman? Read all about her and more formidable females in this edgy, one-of-a-kind collection that combines poetry, fascinating facts, and pictures.
This wow-worthy book proves that women have been making their mark in all aspects of history even the high seas! Meet Ching Shih, a Chinese pirate who presided over a fleet of 80,000 men (by contrast, Blackbeard had some 300). Get the scoop on Anne Bonny who famously ran away from an arranged marriage to don trousers and brandish a…
I’m a criminal defense attorney, mom, and wife who grew up along Lake Michigan in Wisconsin and lived there for 35 years, staring out at the vast water of the “Inland Seas” aka The Great Lakes. Intrigued by pirates, the criminals of the water, and the stories of pirates roaming the lakes, when I began writing fiction, I absolutely had to write a modern pirate series set in the area where I grew up. I’ve read dozens and dozens of historical non-fiction books about pirates, watched all the classic films and shows about them, and have read pirate romances my entire life, so writing my own was the next logical step.
This one is for all the parents out there. My five-year-old daughter absolutely adores all things pirate and we love James Davies’ book, Meet the Pirates. It gives historical information and background in a really bright and fun way that keeps kids interested in learning. My daughter was riveted when I was reading to her from this book, all about the background of the pirates, where they roamed the seas, where they settled, and about pirate ships. Even I learned a lot of interesting tidbits of information that I didn’t know. This is part of a series by James Davies that introduces kids to the Ancient Romans, Greeks, and Egyptians, too.
There's so much to digest when it comes to History - how do you know where to begin? These incredible short introductions are just the thing for readers aged 6+ who are beginning to explore ancient history. Get to know the basics on Pirates from famous looters to scurvy and hygiene, with easy-to-digest, humorous text that is reminiscent of the bestselling Horrible Histories series. James Davies' stunning artwork and infographics provide a fresh nonfiction approach that is sure to captivate young readers.
I have loved pirates since my first viewing of Mary Martin’s Peter Pan at age 5. My passion for learning about these outlaws led me to discover the hidden stories of women pirates—who have always sailed alongside their male counterparts yet never get the same glory. When I learned about Cheng I Sao, the greatest pirate who ever lived (who was a woman), I was so angry that her story wasn’t more well-known that I wrote a book about it! It has been a joy and an honor to share the stories of pirate women with the world and I have fully embraced my title of “crazy pirate lady.”
This is a picture book, but it’s absolutely lovely. Jane Yolen lends her considerable storytelling talent to this slim volume, which features both gorgeous illustrations of pirate women and bite-sized adaptations of their stories. This is a book I gift to most of the children in my life as a perfect introduction to the world of pirate women.
In 1963 Jane Yolen released a book called PIRATES IN PETTICOATS, because the idea of women as pirates fascinated her--but there wasn't much information about these women who made their livelihoods plundering on the high seas. Scholars have dug up a bounty of new information since then, and Jane, still fascinated, revisits the ladies who loot.
Discover such great pirates as Artemisia, the Admiral Queen of Persia who sailed the seas from 500 to 480 BC. At one point there was a 10,000 drachma prize for anyone who could capture her. There was Rachel Wall, who ran away from her…
Let's face it: pirates of the Golden Age are just cool. No one would actually want to encounter them, but they have been the stuff of escapist dreams since childhood. Adventure, fellowship, treasure–the “romantic” aspects of piracy are what make these otherwise nasty individuals anti-heroes par excellence. As an adult and academic and as an occasional crewman on square riggers, I adopted pirates as a favorite sub-set of maritime history. As with other aspects of the past, I view the history of pirates and piracy as really two narratives: what the records tell us happened and why and what our persistent fascination with them reveals about us.
I taught courses on Atlantic piracy in the early-modern era and always included this lively, authoritative survey of piracy (and anti-piracy). It is a go-to volume for the newcomer to pirate history as well as for the specialist, and my students consistently praised it.
Peter Earle brings his mastery of maritime history to each page and is never boring!
Investigating the fascination pirates hold over the popular imagination, Peter Earle takes the fable of ocean-going Robin Hoods sailing under the "banner of King Death" and contrasts it with the murderous reality of robbery, torture and death and the freedom of a short, violent life on the high seas. The book charts 250 years of piracy, from Cornwall to the Caribbean, from the 16th century to the hanging of the last pirate cptain in Boston in 1835. Along the way, we meet characters like Captain Thomas Cocklyn, chosen as commander of his ship "on account of his brutality and ignorance,"…
Let's face it: pirates of the Golden Age are just cool. No one would actually want to encounter them, but they have been the stuff of escapist dreams since childhood. Adventure, fellowship, treasure–the “romantic” aspects of piracy are what make these otherwise nasty individuals anti-heroes par excellence. As an adult and academic and as an occasional crewman on square riggers, I adopted pirates as a favorite sub-set of maritime history. As with other aspects of the past, I view the history of pirates and piracy as really two narratives: what the records tell us happened and why and what our persistent fascination with them reveals about us.
So where does our modern (mis-)understanding of pirates and piracy come from?
I learned quickly that no one serious about studying piracy can avoid engaging with this famous work (supposedly written by Daniel Defoe, but I have my doubts), first published in 1724 when his subjects were still marauding. It’s a combination of recent reports, reliable letters, dubious rumors, and outright fantasy concerning the pirate scourge.
The author, whoever he (she?) was, chronicles the careers of the age’s most famous pirates (and many from the B-list)–while adding a lot of gratuitous sex and violence. The problem is that too many writers have relied upon this book uncritically since then. Still, I find the author’s flashes of wit, sharp analysis, satire, and political commentary fun as well as useful.
Famed for his enduring fictional masterpieces Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders, Daniel Defoe also possessed considerable expertise in maritime affairs. As a commission merchant, importer, shipowner, and an active journalist who reported "ship news" and interviewed surviving pirates, Defoe achieved a high degree of authority on the subject of buccaneers. His knowledge was such that his book, A General History of the Pyrates, remains the major source of information about piracy in the first quarter of the 18th century. Reprinted here in its entirety, this fascinating history abounds in tales of flamboyant outlaws and their bloody deeds: Captain Edward Teach,…
