Pirates Past Noon

Mary Pope Osborne's Pirates Past Noon is a short time travel adventure for 7 year olds about two children who wish themselves onto a sunny beach and then spot a black flag on the horizon.

What happens

Jack and Annie have a magic tree house in the woods behind their house. Point at a picture in one of its books, make a wish, and you are there.

It is pouring with rain in Frog Creek. So when Annie finds a book lying open at a picture of a palm tree, a green parrot and a blue sea, wishing herself into it feels like the obvious thing to do.

They go swimming. Jack has not looked at the cover yet. (Annie shoved the book into his backpack without checking.)

Then he sees the flag on the ship. Black, with a skull and crossbones.

This is book four in the series and it reads like an early one. Very short chapters. Lots of white space. The sort of book a newish solo reader can finish in two sittings and feel enormously pleased about.

What makes it fun is how different the two of them are. Jack wants to read the research book first and take notes. Annie wants to get in the water right now. He is the one saying wait, she is the one saying run.

There is proper pirate stuff too. A torn treasure map. A riddle about gold lying beneath the whale's eye. Three pirates called Cap'n Bones, Pinky and Stinky.

One thing to flag. The pirates are genuinely menacing rather than comic. They come ashore with knives in their teeth and pistols in their belts. Cap'n Bones grabs both children, tells them to prepare to meet their doom, and has them shut in his cabin on the ship. There are shark fins in the water on the way out.

It never lasts long and the tone stays light. But if your reader is on the young side of 7 and takes the frightening bits to bed with them, sit with them through the middle chapters.

For most children it is about the right amount of peril. Enough to turn the pages fast. Not enough to ruin bedtime.

What to read next

Jack and Annie flick through their old books in the opening chapter, and the one Annie greets with a "Meow" is Mummies in the Morning. That one has an Egyptian tomb, a ghost queen and a very useful black cat.