The Pirates Next Door product reviews

Thank you to KIWIreviews and Scholastic for the opportunity to review this book. I teach predominantly three and four year old boys. Their eyes lit up when I told them I was going to read a story about pirates.

As an adult I loved the morals in the story. As adults we are too quick to judge and gossip about people when they are different to us. It also shows how one good deed can quickly change others' perceptions.

This story is written in a comic book type format. The speech bubbles meant that I put on different character's voices as I was reading. This helped the boys to enjoy the story more.

I loved the illustrations. They were so clear. You could see the grain in the wood. Night-time really looked dark and in the daylight you could see all the facial expressions.

The children loved the lift out pages in the centre depicting the neighbours digging for treasure. To them pirates are all about treasure hunts.

The rhyme is very clever but does make it a bit hard to read the first time. My second reading to the children was much better as I got into the rhythm of the text.

Although my three and four year olds loved it I'm sure this book would be just as popular with up to six year olds.

Miss Three and Miss Five love this book. We have read it so many times already. Firstly it's about pirates, secondly it has great illustrations and thirdly it has a fold out middle. Wahoo!

My fourthly would be that the story tells you also that adults are all just way too judgemental and that 'nasty, mean pirates' might just need to share their booty!

The illustrations are so lovely and colourful and very well done. We spent ages looking at all the pictures on each page as there is so much to look at.

The story is lovely about little Tilda who is friends with Jim the Pirate Boy! Whilst all the neighbours moan, the Jolley-Rogers get their boat fixed and Jim and Tilda become firm friends. When the Jolley-Rogers leave they give everyone a leaving present but I am not so sure they learn their lesson!

An absolutely delightful book which will be read constantly by any little pirate lover. I recommend this book even if you just want to look at the illustrations.