I bought this book when my son went through a pirate phase. I found that it's really more of an adult book, historical, and without many phrases a kid could appreciate or make use of. There are pictures, but they are uniformly black and white,--historically accurate diagrams of ships, maps, and woodcuts of pirates made in the times of pirates. It is amazing how many of today's phrases come from British sailing or pirating. Open to a random page and there's at least one etymology of a word or phrase that comes from that time. Some examples are doughboy, flake out, scuttlebutt, or slush fund. Unfortunately perhaps, 70% of the entries could be found in a dictionary of 17th and 18th century sailing terms with no relation to pirates. A fun read for those interested in the history of words and phrases, and this type of interest is more likely to match with this book; only a hard-core pirate nut or scholar would want to pore through and find the pirate entries, and browse them, without being able to drill down on them more than a few lines. ( )

Great fun for finding common phrases used today as well as some salty sayings to add to your vocabulary. ( )