Something Wickedly Weird 3 – The Buccaneer’s Bones

Chris Mould's The Buccaneer's Bones is a spooky pirate adventure for 8 year olds, with ghostly buccaneers clawing their way out of their graves.

What happens

Stanley Buggles is the young lord of Candlestick Hall, a creaky old house on the island of Crampton Rock. He looks after a silver bird called the Ibis, which is kept safe inside a stuffed pike. The pike talks (and complains, a LOT).

Now the Ibis has stirred up long-dead pirates from every corner of the world, and they're all sailing for Crampton Rock to take it. There's a tattooed captain called Scribbles Flanaghan, a pirate known as Doyle the Dentist who carries pliers, and a sword-swinging ghost in red who walks along the sea bed all the way from Peru.

Stanley and his best friend Daisy from the lighthouse have to think fast. There's a secret tunnel behind a bronze warrior, an old woman with a crystal ball and a midnight row out to a pirate ship in a tiny wooden boat.

This is the third book in the series and it carries straight on from the earlier ones. You'll pick things up as you go, but it helps to have met Stanley before.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

The pirates are rotting skeletons and it's properly creepy in places. Bony hands push up through the soil, one ghost cuts two others clean in half, and a skeleton arm comes off and keeps gripping Stanley's shirt. The book also calls the travellers who help Stanley gypsies, an old-fashioned word you might want to talk about.

For a child who loves a good shiver, it's GREAT fun. The pirates squabble like a bad-tempered family, and the pike is a hoot. Who wouldn't want a grumpy fish as their adviser? A reader who's easily spooked might find the graveyard bits too much at bedtime, though.

What to read next

If they love the pirates but would like something gentler, try The Great Cheese Robbery, also by Chris Mould. A crew of tiny pirates live in a ship in a bottle, and a gang of mice kidnap their cat.