Posted on by TracyC

Angelo the Naughty One

AngeloNaughtyAngelo the Naughty One by Helen Garrett, pictures by Leo Politi, 1944.

The title is a little misleading.  Angelo isn’t so much naughty as he is afraid, although Angelo could be considered naughty because his fear causes him to misbehave.

Angelo Silva hates to take baths because he is afraid of water.  Instead, he loves to play in the dirt with his toy soldiers.  He dreams of one day being a soldier himself, and he imagines that, as a tough soldier, no one would be able to tell him what to do, especially take a bath!  Angelo is in for a surprise.

When his family tries to make him take a bath so he will be clean for his older sister’s wedding, he runs away.

AngeloNaughtySearching

Eventually, he ends up at the fort outside of town, and he is caught by a group of soldiers, comrades of his sister’s fiance, who is also a soldier. Angelo is unable to admit his fear in front of these brave soldiers because he is ashamed that these brave men would think of him as a coward, although he cries and tries to fight his way out of it when they decide to give him a bath, declaring that they won’t know who he is until they get all the dirt off of him.  In the end, he is unable to resist their efforts to resist their efforts to clean him up.

Once Angelo is clean, the soldier who is going to marry his sister recognizes him.  The soldiers borrow some nice boys’ clothes for Angelo to wear and help him dress up nicely for the wedding.  With Angelo looking much better, Angelo’s brother-in-law to be says that Angelo can ride with him to the wedding on his horse.

Before they leave the fort, the soldier says, “Brother soldiers, sitting behind me on my horse is Angelo Silva, the younger brother of my bride, Maria Rosa.  After the wedding he will be younger brother to a soldier and I am sure he will be proud and happy to take baths so he won’t disgrace the army.”  Like a true soldier, Angelo has been given an order!

AngeloNaughtyWedding

Besides getting the warning about not behaving disgracefully, Angelo realizes that he is now free to enjoy the wedding and all the good food, so getting cleaned up has some benefits.  He also likes the attention he receives from others as they marvel at his sudden transformation from a dirty little boy into a clean young man.

The story doesn’t state it directly, but it’s partly about self-confidence and growing up. Angelo admires the grown men who are brave soldiers and would like to be like them, but he can’t until he faces his fears and realizes that what he was afraid of was not as bad as he believed it was.  Soldiers must do brave things, following orders and fulfilling their duty even when they’re afraid, and so must Angelo.  Angelo’s new pride in his appearance and diligence in keeping himself clean is part of his new self-confidence.  He isn’t just proud of how he looks but of his new achievement in getting over his fear, and he likes it that others are proud of him, too.  In the end, his nickname is changed from Angelo the Naughty One to Angelo the Brave One, which is what his father calls him because he has conquered his fear.

This picture book belonged to my mother when she was young.  The pictures are all done in shades of only four colors: black, white, red, and green.  The colors reflect the colors of the Mexican flag.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

Thunder Cake

ThunderCake

Thunder Cake by Patricia Polacco, 1990.

A girl talks about how her grandmother, who she likes to call “Babushka” because she originally came from Russia, cured her of her fear of storms by teaching her to make a special kind of cake, Thunder Cake.

The girl is staying with her grandmother on her farm in Michigan during the summer, and the sound of thunder terrifies the girl so much that she just wants to hide under the bed.  However, her grandmother insists that the girl come out and help her gather the ingredients for her Thunder Cake.

ThunderCakeGrandma

The grandmother explains to the girl how to tell how far away a storm is by counting the seconds between when she sees a flash of lightning and when she hears the sound of thunder.  She also says that they need to get the cake ready by the time the storm actually arrives, so they’d better hurry.

ThunderCakeIngredients

Keeping track of how close the storm is and getting all the ingredients together to make the cake helps to keep the girl busy, and by the time the storm actually arrives, she is no longer afraid.

ThunderCakeFinished

The pictures are an interesting combination of pencil drawings and bright colors.  The faces and hands of the girl and her grandmother are completely in pencil, but their clothes and everything around them are painted.

I didn’t include the recipe for Thunder Cake here because the book is still in print, and I have kind of a rule that I don’t include recipes from books that are still in print.  However, this recipe is one of the more well-known ones from children’s literature, and it’s pretty widely available on the Internet, some with pictures of the cakes people made from this recipe.  For example, this blog has a nice article about this book with helpful notes for those who want to try to make the cake.  This site also has the recipe along with some comments from others who tried it.  I was surprised the first time I read it that one of the ingredients in the chocolate cake was tomatoes, but the consensus seems to be that they are really necessary to make this cake properly.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC · 3 Comments

Miss Rumphius

MissRumphius

Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney, 1982.

From the time she was young, Alice Rumphius wanted to travel and see the world.  She planned to return home to live by the sea when her travels were over.  However, her grandfather, an artist, gives her one more mission in life: to make the world more beautiful.  Although Alice isn’t quite sure how she will accomplish that, she agrees.

RumphiusPainting

When she grows up, she lives out her dream of traveling, seeing all the places that she read about while she working in a library.  However, she ends up hurting her back while getting off of a camel she was riding, so she decides that it’s time to retire and find a home by the sea, as she planned.

RumphiusCamel

As she recovers from her injury, she thinks about her mission to make the world more beautiful.  At first, she still doesn’t know how to accomplish that, but some flower seeds she planted and her particular love of lupines give her the inspiration for her final legacy of beauty.

RumphiusLupines

Her gift of spreading seeds of beautiful flowers gives her a reputation as an eccentric, the Lupine Lady, but it also inspires a new generation to undertake their own missions to see the world and to create beauty in their own way.

RumphiusChildren2

One of the things that fascinates me about Miss Rumphius and her story is that she leads a very non-traditional life.  She has very definite goals from childhood and sticks to them throughout her life, but they are not quite the common goals of most people, like marriage and career.  She remains unmarried throughout her life (the book never says anything about whether she had any romances in her life because that wasn’t one of her main life goals and therefore not really important to the story), and her only listed career was that of working in a library, which allowed her to have some money and to read about the places where she wanted to travel.  In the end, she is not wealthy and has no husband or children of her own, but she is happy because she has achieved the things that always meant the most to her.  She has had rich life experiences, she has made the world a little better for her presence, and she encourages her nieces and nephews to see the world, to enjoy their experiences, and to leave their own mark of beauty.

Apparently, parts of the story are based on the author’s own life and on the life of Hilda Hamelin, the original Lupine Lady.  The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC

The General Store

Historic Communities

GeneralStoreThe General Store by Bobbie Kalman, 1997.

Besides providing 19th century communities with needed goods, general stores were often centers for community life.  Everyone would need to come and purchase or barter for supplies they couldn’t make for themselves, and it was also where mail for the area was delivered and sorted.  People gathered there to pick up what they needed and to exchange news and gossip with other members of the community.  The book explains how general stores functioned, what kinds of goods they carried, and how they helped to build growing communities.

Basically, they were like small department stores, carrying a little of everything that people in the area needed, including food items, dishes and silverware, tools, plant seeds, ready-made clothes and shoes, bolts of cloth, books, newspapers, and medicine.  Store owners had to decide what they would carry in their stores and how much of it to stock.  If they stocked too little of an item everyone wanted, they would run out, and if they had too much of an item hardly anyone wanted, they would either have to sell it at a discount or keep it themselves.  If someone wanted something that the storekeeper didn’t have on hand, they would have to ask the storekeeper to order it for them from a catalog or get it themselves by making a trip to a larger town where they could find what they were looking for.

GeneralStoreDrawersStore owners also had to decide how much they should charge for each item or how much they would be willing to take in trade.  Farmers often bartered for goods with the produce from their farms, and it was common for store owners to use a form of credit to keep track of what their customers owed and what they owed to their customers.  Farmers would typically sell their goods at harvest time, and the store owners would give them a certain amount of credit at their store, based on what they thought the farmers’ produce was worth.  Then, the farmers could use the credit on their account at the store until the next harvest and selling time.  If a farmer ran out of credit before the next harvest, the store owner would usually extend credit at the store to the farmer to allow him and his family to buy some necessities, knowing that the farmer could make up for it when he came to sell his next batch of produce.

To keep their customers from disputing the prices they charged at the store, store owners often used a kind of code to keep track of the amounts they spent to buy each item and the price they wanted the customer to pay in order to make a decent profit.  The codes were usually something like a substitution code, using letters to represent numbers so customers would need the store owner to interpret the price tags and manage their credit account.  This code system became less common after the 1870s because more people were simply using cash instead of bartering for goods, but I thought that it was a fascinating piece of history.

GeneralStoreMailAnother odd kind of code that the book mentions was the kind that people would use on mailed letters.  Instead of the sender paying the postage, as they do now, people receiving letters were supposed to pay for them when they picked them up from the general store.  If a receiver returned a letter unopened, they wouldn’t need to pay anything, so some people would try to cheat the system by writing a message in code on the outside of the envelope so the receiver would know the most important part of what the writer wanted to tell them for free.

People who practiced special trades, such as blacksmiths or printers, would often set up shop near the general store, and that would be the basis for the main street of growing towns.  Later, when railroads connected more towns, more people began ordering what they wanted themselves through catalogs (not unlike the way people have begun ordering more goods through the Internet). Mail started being delivered to individuals’ homes, and general stores were replaced by more modern department stores and specialty shops.

I loved the pictures in the book, a combination of photographs from living history museums and drawings.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

GeneralStoreFun

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

Mary Geddy’s Day

MaryGeddyMary Geddy’s Day: A Colonial Girl in Williamsburg by Kate Waters, 1999.

This book is part of a series of historical picture books about Colonial America.

Mary Geddy was a real girl living in Williamsburg in 1776. In this book, she is reenacted by Emily Smith, a young interpreter at the Colonial Williamsburg living history museum. The story follows her through a single day in her life as it would have been typically experienced by girls around the beginning of the American Revolution (lessons, chores, shopping, and visiting with her friend) up until the moment when the vote for independence at the Fifth Virginia Convention was announced.

Mary Geddy’s father was a silversmith, which put them in the middle class for the times.  They had a comfortable house with a shop next door where Mr. Geddy sold his silver work.  The Geddy family also had slaves to take care of household chores.

At the beginning of the story, Mary knows that the Fifth Virginia Convention is voting on the subject of independence from Great Britain.  Mary is concerned about the prospect of war, and she knows that if the vote is for independence, she will probably lose her best friend, Anne.  Anne’s family are loyalists, and her family plans to return to England if the colonies decide to break away.

All through the day, people are speculating and worrying about what is going to happen as they go through the typical routines of their day.  Mary explains the clothing that colonial girls would wear as she gets dressed in the morning.  Then, her mother sends her out to buy eggs at the market.  Although she can see Anne there and hear some of the talk about what’s happening, Mary is kept at home for most of the rest of the day, practicing her sewing, learning to bake a pie with her mother, helping in the garden, and having her music lessons. She is learning to play the spinet.  She envies her brothers, who are allowed to help their father in his shop and therefore able to hear more of the talk than she is.

I particularly liked how they showed the coins that Mary uses when she goes shopping.  Even though Mary’s family lives in an English colony, she’s using pieces of eight, which is Spanish money.  The book doesn’t explain what currency she’s using or why, but that’s why the coins are those little triangular shapes, like little pieces of pie. Let me explain.

First, the American colonies had a currency problem.  They actually had a shortage of English currency because England didn’t want wealth to leave the English economy and go out to the colonies.  One of the measures they took to prevent wealth from leaving England was to make it illegal to export higher-value pieces of currency to the colonies.  People in the colonies needed something to replace the pieces of currency that they didn’t have or had in too short supply, so they resorted to other methods of exchange such as barter, IOUs recorded in ledgers, and currency from other countries.  They had some standard units of exchange for converting different currencies into British money because that was the way people in British colonies thought about money.  One of the most popular coins in use was the old Spanish dollar or piece of eight, which was worth eight reales (unit of Spanish currency).  However, sometimes, people wanted to use a smaller piece of currency for small purchases and transactions (like buying eggs), so they physically cut one coin into eight pie-shaped pieces (hence, “pieces of eight”), each worth only one real.  They had to do the coin cutting very carefully because the value of this type of money was based on the amount of silver in the coins themselves, and if they cut a coin unevenly, it would impact the value of the sections.  Each section of a piece of eight was called a “bit“, and two bits would be worth one-quarter of the value of the original coin, which is why some people in the US refer to a US quarter as “two bits.”  That’s what Mary is holding in her hand in the picture.  For more information, see the YouTube video from Townsends about The History of Money in America.

When they discover that the Convention voted for independence, there is celebrating in the streets, and Mary goes with her parents and brothers to see everything.  Her little sister is afraid of the noise and stays at home with the slaves.  Everyone is excited, but Mary is worried because she knows that her friend will leave and nothing will be the same again.

Throughout the book, you can see that the slaves are always a part of the family’s activities.  They do chores together, and when the family is not doing housework, the slaves are still working in the background.  Having slaves didn’t mean that the family never had to do any chores themselves, but they had to do less of them, giving them more time for other things, like music lessons and visiting with friends.  When the celebrating starts, the boy slave, Christopher, who is about the age of the Geddy children, wants to go and see what is happening himself, but he has to stay and help look after the younger girl in the family.  Although the slaves live as part of the household and seem to be on friendly terms with the Geddys (Mary speaks of them fondly, wishing that Christopher could join in the celebration and is happy that Grace, the slave who mainly works in the kitchen as the cook, seems proud of her for learning to make a pie), they have no say in making decisions and are expected to follow the orders they are given, even when they don’t want to or larger events are taking place.

In the back, there is more historical information about the period and the Geddy family.  There are also instructions for making a lavender sachet like the kind Mary and her friend Anne make and a recipe for apple pie that was used in Colonial Williamsburg, like the one that Mary learns to make in the story.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

Animalia

Animalia

Animalia by Graeme Base, 1986.

The best part about this book is the pictures.  They are absolutely beautiful and contain many small details for readers to spot.

On the surface, the book is about the alphabet, each page featuring a single sentence with every or almost every word starting with the same letter, and all of the pages are in alphabetical order.  (If you’re wondering what the author used for ‘X’, it’s a fox.  ‘X’ is an exception because all of the letters in that sentence end with ‘X’ instead of starting with it.)  The sentences and pictures are about animals, some real and some mythical.

AnimaliaGorillas

However, there is also a game that you can play with the book which is explained in a poem on the title page:

“Within the pages of this book
You may discover, if you look
Beyond the spell of written words,
A hidden land of beasts and birds.
For many things are ‘of a kind’,
And those with keenest eyes will find
A thousand things, or maybe more–
It’s up to you to keep the score.
A final word before we go;
There’s one more thing you ought to know:
In Animalia, you see,
It’s possible you might find me.”

Readers are invited to notice all of the other things in the pictures which start with the designated letter, and the author himself appears throughout the book, hiding in the pictures. There is a picture of him on the title page so you know who to look for.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

AnimaliaLions

AnimaliaPeacocks

Posted on by TracyC

Black and White

Black and White by David Macaulay, 1990.

BlackWhite

This book is unusual because there are four stories inside, being told at once, but there is one continuous storyline that joins all four of them together.  Two of the stories don’t have many words, but if you pay close attention to the pictures, the connection to the other stories becomes obvious.  The title of the book is also kind of a hint, although those colors apply to more than one aspect of the overall story.

The picture at the right is from the title page, and the title page has the message that explains the concepts behind the stories. One of the fun things about this book is reading it multiple times. You can read the stories and look at the pictures of all four stories as you go through the book the first time, but if you look at each story in isolation, you can experience the continuity of each thread of the bigger stories and notice additional details.

BlackWhiteStories.jpeg

The four stories are:

Seeing Things — A young boy takes a train trip by himself, going home to his parents.  He sleeps through most of his long journey, but during the night, he wakes up to some strange happenings.

A Waiting Game — A group of commuters waiting for their train, which has been unexpectedly delayed, find amusing ways to entertain themselves.

Problem Parents — A girl and her brother are convinced that their parents are crazy when they arrive home from their offices in the city wearing weird outfits made of newspapers and singing.

Udder Chaos — An escaped convict hides among a herd of cows.

You might be able to get some of the connections between these stories from what I’ve said and the pictures I’ve shown, but it gets funnier if you keep going through the stories, seeing where each of them lines up with the others.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

BlackWhitePic1
BlackWhitePic2
BlackWhitePic3
Posted on by TracyC · 3 Comments

Harvey’s Hideout

HarveysHideout

Harvey’s Hideout by Russell Hoban, illustrated by Lillian Hoban, 1969.

HarveysHideoutHouseSummer is difficult for the Muskrat kids this year.  Their friends are away for the summer, and Harvey and his older sister Mildred are getting on each other’s nerves.  But, there’s nothing that says they have to spend the whole summer with each other.

Harvey builds himself a raft and tells Mildred that he’s going off to meet with members of his secret club for a cookout where annoying big sisters aren’t welcome.  Mildred says that’s fine with her because she’s been invited to a party where there will be no annoying little brothers.  Harvey says that’s fine with him . . . except that it really isn’t.

The secret hideout where Harvey has been spending his time is empty except for him and the comic books he brought with him, and his cookout is for only one person.  He just made up the story about the secret club to make Mildred jealous and to have an excuse to spend time away from the house and her.  Harvey appreciates the freedom, but he’s also bored and lonely and envies Mildred, wondering who she knows who is still in town, inviting her to parties every day.

Then, when Harvey tries to make some improvements to his secret hideout, he discovers that he’s not the only one to dig a secret hideout for himself in the area.  Harvey’s unexpected discovery leads to a change in his relationship with his sister.

HarveyHideoutSecret

 

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive, and new copies are also available to buy through Plough.  If you try it and like it, consider buying a copy to own!

HarveysHideoutFriends

My Reaction

This is a nice story about sibling rivalry and cooperation.  One of the parts I like best is early on in the story when Harvey and Mildred’s father lectures them for fighting and insulting each other. I hated that part when I was a kid, but I kind of like it now because I realize what the father is actually trying to say.  He points out that there is some truth in their insults, but they’re wrong about each other at the same time.  Part of the reason they fight is because they each have their faults (Harvey can be selfish and Mildred can be bossy), but they each unfairly assume that the other is a lost cause and that they can never be friends.  It’s only when they come to realize that they’re equally lonely (Mildred has been having tea parties with just her doll) and Harvey makes the first move in offering to share what he has with Mildred that they realize that they can each be the friends they both need this summer.

When I was a kid, I wished I had a hideout like theirs!  I also love the colorful illustrations in the story.

Posted on by TracyC

Egyptian Diary

EgyptianDiary

Egyptian Diary: The Journal of Nakht by Richard Platt, 2005.

A young boy in Ancient Egypt, Nakht, is excited because his family will soon move to Memphis because a distant relative has offered his father a job working as a scribe.  Memphis is a large, important city, with more opportunities than Esna, where the family currently lives.  Nakht is also training to be a scribe, so he begins writing an account of his family’s journey to Memphis and what they encounter when they arrive.

EgyptianDiaryPic1

The journey to Memphis includes a boat trip down the Nile, past the City of the Dead near Thebes, where pharaohs are buried.  When they arrive in Memphis, they make themselves at home in their new house, which is bigger than their old one.  For the first time, Nakht has a private bedroom of his own, and the wall is decorated with a hunting scene.  Nakht also has a bed to sleep in, although he is still more accustomed to sleeping on a mat on the floor, as he did back in Esna.

In Esna, Nakht’s father had taught him his lessons as a scribe, but in Memphis, Nakht begins attending a school with other boys.  There, he practices his writing as always, although he must also learn the older, more formal hieroglyphic form of writing used on the walls of temples and for public inscriptions as well as the less formal writing used more commonly.  Nakht also receives lessons in building and engineering, which includes calculating the weight of the building stones, how many people it would take to move them, and how much food and drink the workers would need during their time of service).  Sometimes, their teacher also takes the students places for lessons, like taking them to the fields near the river so they can see how to build canals and how farmers water their fields.

There are many exciting things going on in Memphis.  Ships come and go from many places.  When the Nile floods, Nakht describes how the Controller of Granaries sets the taxes on grain for the following year by measuring the highest height of the Nile during the flooding time, which is an indicator of how good the next year’s grain harvest will be.  Nakht and his sister Tamyt witness the funeral procession of a scribe, complete with dancers, paid mourners, and a procession of servants carrying all of the furniture and supplies to be loaded into the man’s tomb for him to use in the afterlife.

EgyptDiaryPic2

Then, Nakht learns that his father and other scribes are investigating tomb robberies in Saqqara.  Nakht and Tamyt have never seen the tombs before, but their father refuses to let them come with him.  Instead, the two of them sneak over by themselves to have a look.  While they are there, they witness the robbing of a tomb!  They get a good look at an unusual ring on the finger of one of the robbers and are shocked to later see an identical ring on the finger of a very important person!

EgyptDiaryPic3

At the end of the story, when Nakht and Tamyt are rewarded for their role in catching the thieves, it is revealed that the current king of Egypt is Hatshepsut, who is actually a woman.

EgyptDiaryPic4

Among the other things that Nakht explains about his life are how the doctor treated him when he broke his arm, how grain is harvested, how different types of craftsman work, and how houses are built.  Nakht also undergoes a special hair-cutting ceremony as a coming-of-age ritual.

There is a section in the back that explains more about Ancient Egyptian history and society.  It also explains Egyptian writing, religion, mummies, and tombs.

The book is part of a series of historical picture books.  It is currently available online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC

Pirate Diary

PirateDiary

Pirate Diary: The Journal of Jake Carpenter by Richard Platt, 2001.

Young Jake Carpenter lives with his father in North Carolina in 1716.  His mother is dead, and his father is a medical doctor.  His father wants him to become a doctor as well, but he has decided that it’s important to the boy’s education that he see something of the world first, so he is allowing Jake to go to sea with his uncle, Will, who is a sailor.  Jake is excited about the prospect, and Will has told him many stories about the sea.

PirateDiaryPic1

Jake isn’t allowed to bring much with him because there is limited space on board the ship for personal belongings, and there are many things that Jake has to get used to, like sleeping in a hammock, the names for all the different parts of the ship, seasickness, the poor quality of food on the ship, and using the horn lanterns which are safer for candles on board ship but don’t cast much light.  Jake makes friends with Abraham, the cook’s boy, who promises him extra food in exchange for teaching him to read.  Jake’s main job on the ship is to help the carpenter, so he begins learning his trade.

When the ship is underway, Jake and his uncle learn that the captain is running from debts and that the ship is carrying contraband.  Jake doesn’t think that smuggling is a very serious crime because the main purpose is to avoid paying extra taxes on certain types of goods, and other members of the crew say that it isn’t fair for Americans to continue paying taxes to England when the king doesn’t really care about them or what they want.  The ship sails the Caribbean, but crew members say that they try to avoid docking at English-controlled ports, like the ones in Jamaica, so they won’t have to pay the customs fees. Abraham says that even if they were caught with their contraband, the authorities would likely look the other way if they offer them a share.  Will tells Jake that the captain of the ship will most likely hold back their wages in order to keep them with the ship for as long as possible, like he does with other sailors.

Discipline on board the ship is harsh and arbitrary, according to the captain’s whims.  When Will speaks up to save Jake from a harsh flogging, he himself is flogged and abandoned in a small boat.  Jake believes that his uncle will die because they left him at sea with no provisions!

Then, the ship is captured by pirates!

PirateDiaryPic2

Far from making things worse, Jake’s situation and that of the rest of the crew actually improves because of the pirate attack.  With the captain captured, his cruel punishments are over, and members of his crew eagerly join the pirates in the capture.  The pirates ask the crew about the treatment their captain has given them, saying that it will help them to decide what to do with him, and crew members explain the cruelties they have suffered, including what the captain did to Will.  They end up marooning the captain and his equally-cruel second mate on an island with drinking water.

As Jake’s father predicted, Jake gets to see a lot and learn a lot about life and death during his time at sea, perhaps even more than expected while under the command of the pirates.  He gets some experience in dealing with injuries as he has to help the ship’s carpenter saw off the leg of a man whose wound was too infected to treat in any other way, although the man later died anyway.  Later, the pirates join up with other pirate ships, and Jake participates in a raid on a Spanish treasure fleet!

PirateDiaryPic3

It’s not all excitement, and Jake spends some time talking about the routine chores that sailors did and how they would pass the time on board ship when nothing else was going on.  He does get to see St. Elmo’s Fire on the upper rigging of the ship, and the crew spots a “mermaid” once on a misty day.

An offer of amnesty for those willing to give up pirating allows Jake and other members of the crew to return home where he learns that his uncle has managed to survive after all!

PirateDiaryPic4

In the back of the book is a section with historical information.  It explains the history and geography of the American Colonies, where Jake lived and the history of piracy from the first known pirates to the privateers and buccaneers that led to the golden age of piracy in the 18th century.  Jake is a fictional character, but some of the pirates that Jake met in the story were real people, and the section in the back explains more about them.  The book is part of a series of historical picture books.