Captain Grey

I picked this up to read between the biography "The Bashful Billionaire" and "The Patchwork Planet", both adult reads. I have been reading Avi's books for a while and am attempting to have a complete collection of his.

Granted the book is for kids, but it offers excitement, mystery and adventure that even adults can get into.

It is 1783 and pirates do exist. Kevin Cartwright has been kidnapped by one of the most murderous ones around, Captain Grey. Grey and his band killed his father and sister but kept Kevin. Why? What will they do with him?

Captain Grey has established his "Free Nation" in a cove on the New Jersey shore. There is a 'sand island' that sits across the opening to the cove and provides cover so the the pirates can watch the show more traffic of the ships that go up and down the coast without being seen. A perfect set up to allow them to pick and choose their victims for plundering.

Captain Grey trains Kevin in the way of the pirates and lets Kevin know that he is now 'one of them'. Kevin still can't figure out why, and keeps hope that some how he will be able to escape from these men.

When a pigeon shows up in the attic room he is given, he starts a friendship with it. The friendship will lead to much more....more than he imagined.

Being a kids' book it is a short read, but there is a lot packed into the pages. A Goodread to me! show less

As the book opens, Kevin Cartwright is almost immediately kidnapped by Captain Grey and his band of pirates. Believing his father and sister murdered, Kevin is taken to the pirate's settlement and told he would learn to be one of them. Captain Grey, whose every command is followed immediately by is 60 or so men, rules a small coastal settlement in the woods of New Jersey, shortly after the American Revolution. He has a specific method of attacking, plundering, and then sinking, any passing merchant vessel, allowing all on board to die, so that no one survives to tell where and how they were attacked.
A young boy, Kevin has no idea how he can escape from, or prevent further attacks from this band of pirates.
The story is told much in the show more style of Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. Well done tale, the biggest drawback being that the conclusion feels quite rushed. show less

"I shall find a way to get free." "Free!" he shouted. "You are here, with us now. You can forget about your father and your sister, or anybody else you may have known. You belong to no nation but this nation. Put him back where he was and don't feed him. Tomorrow we shall talk again about freedom!"

Dieses Buch ist ein hervoragendes Kinder und Jungendbuch.
Es beschreibt in erzählerischer Weise wie 2 Kinder alles verlieren und schließlich wieder zueinander finden, nachdem das Schicksal sie auf grauenhafte Weise getrennt hatte. Hierbei steht allerdings die Geschichte des Jungen im Vordergrund, weil er unter die Gefangenschaft der Piraten gerät und nicht seine Schwester.
In dem Buch wird jedoch sehr plastisch beschrieben, was alles getan wird, auch im Kampf, daher sollten die Kinder nicht zu jung sein, wenn sie dieses Buch lesen.
Das Ende ist jedoch typisch für Avi, viel zu kurz und zu sehr abbrechend, so als wäre die Luft raus in den letzten beiden Kapiteln.