Pirate School – The Bun Gun

The Bun Gun by Jeremy Strong is a very noisy Pirate School adventure for 5 year olds about a crew of small pirates who are absolutely starving.

What happens

It is lunchtime. The teachers are shut in the head teacher's cabin working through sausages, fried eggs, bacon and roughly four hundred baked beans.

The children get one baked bean each. So does Jazz the dog.

Ziggy knocks and asks, very bravely, for food like theirs. Patagonia Clatterbottom tells him the good stuff is for staff only and slams the door in his face.

She keeps it all in a Top-Secret Food Store, which would be a much better secret if she hadn't announced it in the street.

Because a gang of grown up pirates called the Woppagobs have been listening. They don't bother with gold. They take food, and they have just worked out where the best cupboard for miles around is.

So that is two raids heading for one locked door. Smudge gets in first by standing outside the cabin and yelling FIRE, which works beautifully right up until it doesn't.

This book is LOUD. CHOMP. SLURP. BANG. Capitals all over the page. Read it aloud and you will end up shouting, and your child will love you for it.

The best running joke is Lily Lollop. She does sound effects. Boris tells the gang not to splash as they row up to the ship, so she whispers splish instead, because splishing is much quieter.

He gets crosser. She keeps going. Even a plank gets a creak, to make the whole thing more exciting.

There is a good quiet bit too, when Smudge is shut in the dark hold and finds the torch Ziggy shoved down the back of his trousers. Clever Ziggy!

Then Smudge overhears something from the cabin above that he really was not meant to hear, and has a much better idea.

The chapters are tiny. One scene each and then you are off again. Nothing in it is frightening. It is bottoms, buns and a great deal of bellowing.

If your child is just getting going with chapter books and thinks a rude noise is the height of comedy, this will vanish in one sitting.

What to read next

The same crew are back in A Very Fishy Battle, except that time Patagonia decides to teach them how to raid properly and sails the entire school off to attack the Woppagobs at home.