Table of Contents
REAL PIRATES
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A Year on a Pirate Ship (Millbrook Press, 2009) by Elizabeth Havercroft covers twelve months of pirate life with tiny detailed illustrations, made to be pored over. The pirates variously load their ship, set to sea, and tackle whales, enemies, weeds, and shipwreck. For ages 5 and up. |
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Barry Clifford’s Real Pirates (National Geographic Children’s Books, 2008) is the picture-book history of the ship Whydah, first a slave ship, then a pirate ship, and finally a spectacular underwater archaeological find. For ages 9 and up. |
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Martin W. Sandler’s The Whydah (Candlewick, 2017) is the fascinating story of the only pirate ship ever found – which sank off the coast of Cape Cod in 1717. For ages 10 and up. |
| The Whydah Museum in Provincetown, Massachusetts, is dedicated to the recovery of the wreck of pirate “Black Sam” Bellamy’s treasure-laden Whydah, sunk in a storm in 1717. | |
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Richard Platt’s Pirate Diary: The Journal of Jake Carpenter (Candlewick Press, 2005), the fictional diary of a nine-year-old boy, is an historically accurate picture of 18th-century pirate life. Included are maps, a cutaway diagram of a pirate ship, a short history of piracy, and biographies of famous pirates. For ages 9 and up. |
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John Malam’s You Wouldn’t Want to be a Pirate’s Prisoner (Children’s Press, 2002) in the Horrible Things You’d Rather Not Know series, traces the pirate experience from “Treasure Fleet! Your Ship Sets Sail” through “Pirate’s Prize,” “In Irons! Shackled to the Deck,” “Flogged!,” “Diseased and Done For,” and “Marooned,” to “Saved! The Navy to the Rescue.” The not-so-nice side of piracy for ages 9 and up. |
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Blackbeard (Running Press Kids, 2011) by Pat Croce is a 56-page biography of Edward Teach – a.k.a. Blackbeard, one of the most notorious pirates of all time. For ages 9-12. |
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J. Patrick Lewis’s Blackbeard the Pirate King (National Geographic Children’s Books, 2006) is a collection of twelve illustrated poems about the wicked but ever-popular pirate. For ages 7 and up. |
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Kathleen Krull’s Lives of the Pirates covers nineteen in chronological order, from Alvilda, Viking princess turned pirate circa 400, through Captain Kidd, William Dampier, Mary Read and Anne Bonney, and Black Sam Bellamy. Catchily written and informative for ages 9-14. |
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Laura Sook Duncombe’s A Pirate’s Life for She (Chicago Review Press, 2019) is the story of “swashbuckling women through the ages, from the ancient Norse princess Alfhild on. An exciting read about remarkable women for ages 10 and up. |
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Piracy: an equal-opportunity profession. Jane Yolen’s Sea Queens: Women Pirates Around the World (Charlesbridge Publishing, 2010) is a reader-friendly survey of female pirates, from Artemisia, the Admiral-Queen of Persia, in the 5th century BCE, to the 18th century’s Anne Bonney and Mary Read and the 19th century’s Madame Chang. For ages 9-13. |
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By C.S. Forester – author of the Horatio Hornblower series – The Barbary Pirates (Sterling Point Books, 2007) is the story of America’s clash with the pirates off the shores of Tripoli in North Africa in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. For ages 12 and up. |
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Benerson Little’s How History’s Greatest Pirates Pillaged, Plundered, and Got Away With It (Fair Winds Press, 2010) covers the exploits of thirteen famous pirates, among them Grace O’Malley, Francis Drake, Henry Morgan, Edward Teach (Blackbeard), and Jean Lafitte. For teenagers and adults. |
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David Cordingly’s Under the Black Flag: The Romance and Reality of Life Among the Pirates (Random House, 2006) is a fascinating history of real and imaginary pirates – the romance, it turns out, was highly overrated – for teenagers and adults. |
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The Pirate Hunter (Hyperion, 2003) by Richard Zacks is subtitled “The True Story of Captain Kidd.” In this detailed 400+-page biography, Zacks argues that Kidd was actually a privateer, hired by the British government to track down pirates and retrieve stolen goods. For teenagers and adults. |
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Colin Woodard’s The Republic of Pirates (Mariner Books, 2008) is the story of the “Golden Age” of pirates in the early 18th century, when a consortium of pirates – among them “Black Sam” Bellamy and Edward “Blackbeard” Teach – set up a functioning government in the Bahamas. Pirates, perhaps, but also social revolutionaries. For teenagers and adults. |
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Stephan Talty’s Empire of Blue Water is the story of legendary pirate Henry Morgan and his (impressively influential) 17th-century career attacking Spaniards in the Caribbean. For teenagers and adults. |
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What did pirates eat? See National Geographic’s Eat Like a Pirate. |