Book Review :: Pirates on the Farm by Denette Fretz

Pirates on the Farm (The Next Door Series) by Denette Fretz

Pirates on the Farm is the first book in The Next Door Series by Denette Fretz. The basic idea is that five pirates (and one parrot) buy a farm next door to the Sanders family (a father, mother, daughter, and son) in a southern community.

First, I will start by sharing the responses from my kids after I read it to them and asked them, "What did you think about that book?":

Son, age 4: "I wish it had a trillion pages."

Son, age 7: "It teaches us about what to do to your neighbor. I really like that book. It's cool."

Daughter, age 9: "It's good. It's funny. I wish it would never end."

Unfortunately, I wasn't quite as excited about the book as my kids were. It was okay, but I didn't think the writing was quite as engaging as other children's books. There were also many words that aren't generally in kids' vocabulary (which is fine...learning new words is always good), but the definitions of those words listed in the back of the book were described in pirate lingo. Pirate lingo is fun, but not really helpful for when you are looking for a real definition.

As for the lesson in the book, I do feel like the end result was good (with people caring for their neighbors), but leading up to it for the majority of the story was nearly everyone in the book not showing love to their neighbors. And the change of heart was very easy to miss (in my opinion) because it wasn't stated in the words of the story, but just in the artwork. (The artwork is very cute, by the way.)

It wasn't quite up to what I was hoping for, but in the end, my kids all did enjoy it.
FTC Declaration: The publisher has provided me with a complimentary copy of this book or advanced reading copy through BookSneeze®. This does not change the fact that I will give my honest opinion in my reviews.