Pirate Stories

I haven’t read this personally, but plan to this school year:

Howard Pyles’ Book of Pirates by Howard Pyle and Merle Johnson

The swiss family robinson would be a good boy story and while it does not revolve around pirates, it does have them plus good boy characters.

what about bluebeard? is he from treasure island or a diferent pirate tale?

Bluebeard is actually the name of the title character in Charles Perrault’s Les Contes de ma Mère l’Oye, first published in 1697. It is an extremely violent tale of a nobleman who likes to kill his wives, one that has been adapted to many different forms over the past 300 years. Andrew Lang included his own version in The Blue Fairy Book (no thanks, we just skip that one!).

Long John Silver is the main pirate character in Treasure Island. Jim Weiss does an excellent storytelling of the book on CD which my son loves to listen to. Have you tried that one Heather? I completely agree with the fact that pirates are hardly the type of role models we want for our kids. The whole Pirates of the Caribbean craze over the past few years hasn’t really helped much either! We have a family friend who is from Jamaica and she says that the glamorization of pirates is really sad to her because of the terrible history of death and destruction her people underwent at their cruel hands. I had never thought about it before, but her perspective really helped me a lot. We try to focus on the treasure-hunting, adventuring aspect of pirates, but that seems to glamorize greed… what’s a mother to do?

Rachel

Heather,

Sounds like we have similar situations happening. We haven’t allowed our son to see Pirates of the Caribbean either, but we found out it was played in the background at a birthday party he went to, who would have thought there would be a movie playing at a mid-day party the one time I couldn’t accompany him? Lesson learned…aargh! (you can add a piratey sound to that if you want to 😀 )!

Our son loves to play with his Playmobil pirate and redcoat toys and I’ve reiterated the fact that the pirates were the bad guys and the redcoats were the good guys. G.A. Henty’s book “Among Malay Pirates” is one we might look for, although I’m having a hard time finding reviews about whether the villains are glamorized or not (I think it’s available for free online, so I might preview it to see if it’s worth getting). As for historical literature specifically about the battles between redcoats and pirates, I’m hard-pressed to find any. There is however, a book by Alexandre O. Exquemelin titled The Buccaneers of America which is one of few first-hand accounts of life on a 17th century pirate ship. He was the barber/surgeon/confidante of welsh privateer Henry Morgan and his book is quite a fascinating read, in fact most of the 18th and 19th century pirate-lore literature can be traced back to this early sourcebook.

I think what really churns my gut regarding this whole issue has more to do with a societal shift of good and evil than just the subject of pirates. For example, have you noticed that the supposedly “coolest” costumes are the bad guys (Darth Vader, Davey Jones, any old evil dude will do). Years ago boys would mostly quarrel over who got to play the hero but now I’ve seen boys squabble over who gets to play the “cool” bad guy. I think that began to take subtle root when films like Captain Blood premiered and Errol Flynn played the dashing swashbuckler. Hmmm… that’s the world, no big shocker there, but it still grieves me!

Our family is going to inject a bunch of “hero tales” (both fiction and non-fiction) into our reading and discussions. Like most other things, I think the pirate sensation is a passing phase that we ought to “guide and steer towards a safe harbor”. The inclination of a child’s heart longs for adventure and we need to find proper tales to nourish and direct that hunger.

As a side note, there are three Hardy Boys books which revolve around pirate lore and hidden treasure: The Secret of Pirates’ Hill, The Hidden Harbor Mystery, and The Twisted Claw. One of my personal favorite’s is the Nancy Drew mystery The Secret of the Wooden Lady. Sometimes it is better to get lost in a story that doesn’t revolve around the pirates themselves, but simply what they left behind.

If you have any other thoughts I’d love to hear them, I realize this post has gone all over the place!

Rachel

Ok guys,

I am glad to know I am not the only one that has a problem with the Pirate issue. I didn’t know if I was the only “bad mom” that didn’t want her children focusing on the negative aspects of PIRATES!!.

I am encouraged to know I am not alone and that the ideas you guys mentioned are great ones. I will have to look into those Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew and the ..what was it.. Jim Weis or someone’s audio cd.

Rachel I completely agree and am disgusted with the fact that the glamorized glorified characters are now the BAD guys. I don’t like anything that is out nowadays either on TV or Movies..it is all witches,vampires,pirates, etc..and the real problem is they market these things to children.

My husband is a director for Fruit of the Loom and one of the many things he oversees is the production of childrens underroos.. He has spoke up in meetings about the fact that the movies they are printing on these underroos are NOT children’s movies. Thankfully they listened to him about one movie or type and they didn’t plan to produce those..and soon after they declined the rights to the movie/type..the main character was indicted for something. So it was so good that they didn’t make that property..bad PR for sure.

Anyway, I totally agree with you guys.

Shelly

You ladies are going to love this. As I was perusing my Timberdoodle catalog today I saw a set of books called Adventure stories for Reluctant readers and noticed the Title of one of the books was The Pirate City… and then I read the review of these books and here’s what it says, “While each of these books is a gem, Joy, our reviewer for this series, was especially mesmerized by THE CORAL ISLAND. In the contest of a thrilling and intriguing tale, Ballantyne (the author) does an eye-opening and heart-wrenching job of bringing out the horror of a culture without Christ. By contrasting the cannibalistic culture of the Pacific islands and the greedy nature of the pirates with the godly, Christ-honoring hearts of the heroic young lads, the gospel is seen clearly without preaching.”

Now if that’s not what you’re looking for, I don’t know if you’ll EVER find it! 🙂 One word of caution which they give is that the books were written in the 1800’s and may contain and occasional derogatory term.

Check out http://www.timberdoodle.com They have sets or you can purchase individual titles.

Blessings,

Rebekah