The Pirate’s Eye

Guy Bass's The Pirate's Eye is a daft, warm-hearted monster story for 8 year olds about a small stitched-together creation who starts to wonder if he's part pirate.

What happens

Stitch Head was the very first thing Mad Professor Erasmus ever made. He's tiny and covered in stitches, with one boring black eye and one bright ice-blue one. These days he cures the professor's newest monsters before they can do any damage (the giant octopus-thing in the opening chapter takes a LOT of calming down).

Then his friend Arabella digs an old book out of the professor's childhood playroom. It's the diary of a pirate called Captain Flashpowder, and the man on the cover has exactly the same ice-blue eye.

Could Stitch Head really be part swashbuckler? He writes a list of piratey things and works his way through it. A wooden sword. A swing on a dungeon chain that ends with him flat against a wall. A trusty companion for his shoulder, which he builds himself from a mouldy monkey and a few bits of bat. It wakes up as the angriest thing in the castle.

Then the professor gets a letter, cackles, and walks out of the castle without even packing. Stitch Head has never been without his master before and has no idea what to do with himself.

There's a lot of heart under the jokes. Stitch Head is so shy and so sure he's nothing special, and his friends simply won't let him mope. Arabella is a scruffy girl from the town who's scared of nothing and threatens to kick most things in sight. The Creature shouts every other word and thinks everything is GREAT. Who wouldn't want friends like that?

It's spooky in a jokey way. Arabella's chatter is full of cheerful violence (she smashes the teeth of boys who pull her hair, apparently) and the homemade monkey-bat chews anyone who gets close. There's a sad stretch when Stitch Head thinks his master has gone for good, but it doesn't wallow.

It follows on from the first book, Stitch Head, and mentions how that one turned out, so start there if you can.

What to read next

If your reader likes a small hero who'd rather be left alone and gets pulled into an adventure anyway, try Guy Bass's Scrap. A rusty old robot is tending the flower bed outside his junk-heap house when two human girls turn up on his doorstep and give him a name he hates.