photo by peasap www.flickr.com
*Picture book for preschoolers through first graders
*Little boy and pirate girls as main characters
*Rating: The Night Pirates is a fun read full of imagination and playful language!
Short, short summary: Tom is a nice little boy who is trying to go to sleep. But he hears shadows outside his window, and he wonders if they could be monsters or trolls? Nope, they turn out to be pirates; and what I love about this is that they are LITTLE GIRL pirates!!! 
And even better, they don’t care that Tom is a little boy. They invite him to come along on their adventure anyway. They have to steal the front of his house to disguise their ship, but no big deal! Who will ever know? This is one of those great, clever picture books with a twist at the end shown through the illustration. Children will ask to have The Night Pirates read to them again and again.
So, what do I do with this book?
1. The language in this book is so fun from page one! “Down, down, down the dark, dark street they came.” “Up, up, up the dark, dark house they climbed.” Children will love to read the book out loud with you, especially the repetitive parts. They may even like acting it out–tiptoe down the street, pretend to climb up the house, and stay as quiet as mice.
2. As a shared writing activity, ask students what else the girl pirates and Tom could disguise their ship as. How about the Empire State Building, Arch, or Grand Canyon? You can get big, silly, small, or funny. Make a list on chart paper, assign one to each student, and ask them to write/draw about disguising the girls’ ship with their place.
3. Teach a prediction lesson with this book. Most people will think when the girls and Tom get to the pirates’ island that the pirates will capture them or be mean to them. But the opposite happens. So, before you read the part about what happens to the pirates, ask students to predict what they think will happen. Ask them what they are basing their predictions on (probably movies or books they’ve read like The Pirates of the Carribean).
If you have read this book with your students, let us know here. We always want to know what your children/students liked about it or what activities you did!
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