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Title:  Daisy and the Pirates

Author:  J.T. Allen

Published:  2012 by Sumus Press

Genre:  Children’s Fiction

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Daisy is not your typical eleven year old American girl.  She knows how to survive, and thrive, on a desert island.  Let me start from the beginning.  Daisy’s parents are divorced.  She spends the school year with her mom, but she and her older sister spend the summer with their dad.  Their dad is an archeologist and is always working in remote locations.  At the end of one of his projects, the ship the family is on gets kidnapped by pirates!  Then there’s a storm and they all get shipwrecked.  Talk about bad luck.  Or is it???

This book made me laugh.  Or perhaps I should say that Daisy made me laugh.  As a typical kid, she’d love to miss as much school as possible.

I remember thinking, I’ve just been shanghaied by real pirates and shipwrecked and with any luck we’ll be castaways for the whole school year. (Location 367 on Kindle)

Although this was a children’s book I actually learned a lot.  Seriously.  My husband learned a lot as well because I would tell him all the random facts I picked up.  For instance, I learned what Naples Syndrome is.   Whoa. (Google it.)  Also, did you know that quicksand is usually only a few feet deep?  Movies like to exaggerate; so if you ever get stuck in some, calm down and you’ll probably hit bottom.  It’ll still take a while for you to get out of, but keep it calm. Unless you’re really short, it’s probably not going to go above your head.

Daisy knew so much above roughing it outside it put me to shame!  For instance, how to make fire, how to find fresh water, how to fish using Kon-Tikis, and that you should smoke out where you’re going to sleep at night to get rid of bugs and other unseemly creatures.  She made me want to take a survival course, or at least watch some more Discovery channel so I’ll be better prepared.

The one and only thing I didn’t like about this book was it had the word ‘bitch’ in it.  I’m sure kids know swears by middle school, but now that I’m a parent I don’t like the idea of a swear word in a children’s book.  However, it was only used the one time.

Even though Daisy and the Pirates is a children’s book, as you can see it’s definitely enjoyable by adults as well.  Get it for yourself.  Get it for your kid.  Just don’t be mad when they don’t come down to dinner because they need to see what happens next.   I stayed up so late reading this book and loved every minute of it.

I definitely recommend.

My Rating:  5 out of 5 stars

~Pam

*****I received this book free from the author in exchange for an honest review.*****