Through the Looking Glass Children's Book Reviews
Piratepedia
Historical Fiction
For ages 7 to 12
DK, 2006 ISBN: 978-0756626600
Prepare yourself for you are going to take a journey back in time. You are going to see what it was like to be a pirate through the ages beginning around 500 BC. At this time you are on a Greek trade ship which is traveling peacefully along the coast of Greece until the day when it is attacked by a pirate ship. Clearly this is a dangerous time to be a merchant. Living when the Roman Empire was at its height a few hundred years later is not much better for at this time pirates are snatching people right off the streets to sell them as slaves. Be very careful where you go for you may end up being kidnapped by pirates just as Julius Caesar was when he was young.
Your next stop on the pirate tour through time takes you to the shores of Scandinavia where you are able to see the famous, or infamous, Vikings attacking a small coastal village. There is no doubt that these piratical people take their work very seriously indeed!
In this book readers will travel from ancient Greece to the seas sailed by the corsairs, and from the waters favored by the buccaneers to the Asians seas where the "Japanese Bandits" wreaked havoc on ships and coastal villages in China and Korea. Every aspect of pirate life is explored in an engaging way until the reader is left feeling quite sure that he or she would be perfectly capable of holding his or her own on any pirate ship than came along. Not only do the authors explore the lives of real pirates, but they also touch on those of pirates who appeared in books, on screen, in plays, and on the stage.
Packed with annotated illustrations, photographs, WANTED posters, and much more, this is book which will keep readers busy for hours and which is a must for pirate fans of all ages.
