IGBC: The Very Nearly Honorable League of Pirates: Magic Marks the Spot

A little over a year ago, both my son and I read and enjoyed The Very Nearly Honorable League of Pirates: Magic Marks the Spot. It’s about Hilary, a girl who wants to be a pirate. She applies to the Very Nearly Honorable League of Pirates training program but is rejected because is a girl and sent to finishing school instead. You can find my review here. When it came time to make the list of books for my churches Intergenerational Book Club (IGBC) to read, my son suggested it and I agreed to facilitate the discussion.

All of the kids and grown-ups gave it an enthusiastic thumbs up. There are a lot of magical objects in the book and the magic was definitely one of the kids’ favorite parts. They had fun talking about how they would use magic both as a regular person and as a pirate.

We have a lot more boys in IGBC than girls and not a single one was phased by the main character being a girl. And of course the females in our group were thrilled to have read a book with a strong female lead character.

Whenever I facilitate the discussion, I like to bring a snack that somehow ties into the book. The pirates in this book eat a lot of hardtack, which is basically a super hard cracker. Because it literally never spoils, it’s great to take on sea voyages. However, it’s not sold in the regular grocery store so I had my husband and son make some. It was pretty easy – just flour, water and salt. I also brought Veggie Pirate’s Booty and Cheese Pirate’s Booty in case the hardtack didn’t go over well. To my surprise everybody loved it! My son said it tasted similar to a saltine cracker only super hard. I tried to taste it but I couldn’t bite into my piece. If we ever make it again, we’ll roll it out thinner – that should help make it more edible.

All in all, this book lead to one of our liveliest discussions. All of the kids were really engaged and excited about sharing their thoughts on this book.

For more reviews of books for children and teens, check out Booking Mama’s feature, Kid Konnection, posted on Saturdays. If you’d like to participate in Kid Konnection and share a post about anything related to children’s books (picture, middle grade, or young adult) from the past week, you can go to her site to leave a comment and your link .