Recently we were sent a new book to review – Pirates Don’t Play Cricket from My Little Big Town
As you can see from the collage above, it’s a really bright colourful and action packed book! Pirates don’t play cricket is a story picture book written in rhyme and it tells the tale of two children who happen across a motley crew of pirates playing cricket on the beach. They end up joining in with them, and even teaching them a thing or two to improve their cricket technique. This comes in really handy when another band of pirates approaches across the sea and they are easily able to see them off using all the new throwing techniques that they have just learned to pelt them with coconuts and send them turning on their tail!
The book has a bit of a comic book feel in the way the illustrations are done, with speech bubbles. This is something quite new for my boys, we haven’t seen it in many of their other books but they did enjoy it.
The book is 38 pages long, and seems to be longer and more in depth than the average rhyming story picture book which could be why it has a slightly older recommended age. It is suggested for age 5+. I read it with both my 5 year old (below!) and my 3 year old and they both really enjoyed it. I would say for reading together with an adult, 3 years+ is fine as it kept Mr T’s attention and in fact he requested this book again!
For a 5 year old, they may be able to start reading it alone depending on their reading skills and level. Although each page has only a couple of sentences on it, the language is not the most basic so it would be suitable for more confident readers. Mr Z has enjoyed looking through it by himself but he would not be able to read the whole book without support at this stage.
Pirates Don’t Play Cricket is written by Iain O’Brien and Rowan Gibson and illustrated by Calvin Innes. Iain O’Brien is actually a former international cricket player for New Zealand! There is quite a bit of cricket detail included in the book, in a child friendly way, so it would be a really good way to encourage little ones if they have shown an interest in cricket. It’s not a game by boys have played much before, but we will have to set up some games in the garden as after reading this story, they want to be a cricket playing pirate 😀