Beginning with Treasure Island, books that take place on the bounding main have always garnered an enthusiastic audience. The titles below justifiably earn the title swashbucklers. Filled with adventure, excitement, and danger, they wrap the romance of the voyage around the perennial hopes and dreams of teenagers. Readers of Peter and the Starcatchers (see review) will also be intrigued by these seaworthy titles.
Avi. The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle. 1990. HarperTrophy, paper, $5.99 (0-380-72885-0).
Gr. 5–8. In this cracking good yarn, 13-year-old Charlotte Doyle goes from being a proper young lady to an accused murderer waiting to be hung. Against the advice of others, but obeying her father’s written orders, she boards the brig Seahawk and soon learns that she is stuck with a mutinous crew and a sadistic captain, who wants to frame her for murder.
Lawrence, Iain. The Smugglers. 1999. Delacorte, $15.95 (0-385-32663-7).
Gr. 5–8. Dependent on an unscrupulous, perhaps mad, captain, 16-year-old John, who has taken responsibility for his father’s ship, is alarmed by the portents of death. This stalwart young Everyman, first seen in The Wreckers (1998), is surrounded by a wildly colorful cast of characters taking the journey with him.
McCaughrean, Geraldine. The Pirate’s Son. 1998. Scholastic, $16.95 (0-590-20344-4)
Gr. 6–9. This terrific tale, a full-blooded story, begins in eighteenth-century England as 14-year-old Nathan Gull and his sister accompany Tamo, a pirate’s son, to his homeland in Madagascar, where the trio is surrounded by danger. There’s a wild clash of cultures, and the teens struggle to navigate through a place with rules that add depth to a real page-turner.
Meyer, L. A. Bloody Jack. 2003. Harcourt, $17 (0-15-216731-5).
Gr. 7–10. “Being an Account of the Curious Adventures of Mary ‘Jacky’ Faber, Ship’s Boy,” this recounts how a teenage girl leaves the poverty of London and masquerades as a boy onboard the HMS Dolphin, inconveniently falling in love along the way. The sequel, The Curse of the Blue Tattoo (2004), is another rip-roaring read.
Oppel, Kenneth. Airborn. 2004. HarperCollins/Eos, $16.99 (0-06-053180-0).
Gr. 6–9. Okay, so this voyage doesn’t take place on water, but the drama has a similar feel. Matt Cruse, a cabin boy on the luxury airship Aurora, comes across a dying balloonist who tells him about beautiful creatures floating through the sky. With help from the man’s granddaughter, Matt goes searching for the mysterious, winged creatures that live just above the earth’s surface.
Rees, Celia. Pirates! 2003. Bloomsbury, $17.95 (1-58234-816-2).
Gr. 7–10. Billed as the true and remarkable adventure of female pirates Minerva Sharpe and Nancy Kington, this begins as Nancy is about to enter an arranged marriage with a ruthless Caribbean plantation owner. She bonds with one of her fiancé’s slaves, Minerva, and realizes the depravity of slavery. Together, Nancy and Minerva escape, join a pirate ship, and start slinging swords with the best of them. A story of girl-powered action that also explores the brutality of the eighteenth century.
(Booklist/ September 1, 2004)