Mira Vonne

This was a bit disappointing. For one thing, there was very little information here. It's a very small book, and most of it is pictures, so that there are maybe 3-4 sentences of text on a two-page spread. This seems strange to me; often, books with few words are intended for very young children, but the subject matter itself seems to be directed at a slightly older audience. Moreover, the information lacks detail and historical context. The book is filled with broad, sweeping claims, but show more there is little about specific pirates or events. Another disappointment was the subject matter: much of it doesn't apply specifically to pirates at all. For example, the author writes, "Cooks on pirate ships had little training and few supplies. They put salt on vegetables and meat to make it last longer. As time went on, food rotted. Cooks hid the rotten taste with spices." So the food was bad, and so the bad food was just one of many reasons why a life of golden-age piracy wasn't as glamorous as the movies would suggest. Fine. But this bad food wasn't unique to pirates. When I was in elementary school, in history class, we learned that salt was frequently used to preserve food in the days before refrigeration. It happened for centuries, with pirates and merchants and navy men, with pioneers and colonists and settlers, with different cultures, with normal everyday families preparing normal everyday meals. So it's a nice detail, sure, but it's hardly exclusive to pirates. I feel the same about much of the information here. Infection was tougher to treat before penicillin. Some pirates had infections. (Well, so did everyone else, right?) Some information about the ships and the battles, and about pirates codes, was more interesting. The author did a good job of defining certain technical words as they're encountered in the book, as well as in a glossary at the end, so that was nice. And the pictures themselves are quite interesting and fun. Consider this 2.5 stars. show less

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