Isaac got this book from the school library service, and Dad and Isaac both had fun reading it. It tells the tale of the Spammes (pirates) and how they attempt to rescue Captain Blood (pirate). With an ever decreasing number of ships rats to be found on each page, a spy, mazes, parrots leaving clues, there are several puzzles on each page, lots to find in the illustrations. The similarity to “Where’s Wally” was not lost on me, but this book has far more to it, both in storyline and in variety of puzzles. Isaac is probably a bit young at 4 years old, but an ideal book for boys (and girls who like pirate stories) from five to twelve years old. Great fun to read, my only criticism would be that the story could be even stronger, as sometimes little children need a story read to them at bed time and are too tired to hunt down the clues, whilst most of this one can be read straight off, the last couple of pages only really work if you’ve been collecting the clues as you went along.

We will trackdown a copy of the book “The Viking Saga of Harri Bristlebeard” by the same authors to see if it is as good.