Pirates booklist

Arrr! We all love pirates, or we like the theory of pirates, but if we think about it too much, we start to realize pirates are not the fun romanticized idea, so let’s just go with ARRR! I was looking up some books on something else when I saw a book I vaguely remembered reading with the kids when they were much younger and I thought, I sure do need a pirate booklist to add to my ultimate booklists, so here you go.

(there are affiliate links in here)

Nonfiction Pirate Books

Learn some facts about pirates.

• Pirates: robbers of the high seas– I love Gail Gibbons and this is such a cool book
• Pirates– a good nonfiction book, with illustrations I like
• Pirate Gear- darn, this is out of print, but it’s great
• The Pirate Queen– one of the real woman pirates, there aren’t many, but it’s a cool book and interesting to read about her

I was kind of surprised how few nonfiction pirate books I found at my library.

Completely Fictional Pirate Books

These are the books that are completely made up, you know Pirate Bart or Bob or whatever. They’re usually more cartoony, and brighter illustrations. Some of these books are only vaguely about pirates.

• Pirateology– my library doesn’t have this book, but I love this series of pseudo-historical books that talk about the topic and pretend to be historical and have lots of information, and are more or less factual, and they’re just fun.
• Pirateria: the wonderful plunderful pirate emporium– in a similar vein to the last one, but without the extra bells and whistles.
• Pirate treasure– obviously a book written with small animals as the main characters has no basis in reality, but it’s just so cute.
• Pirate’s Perfect Pet– the illustration style very much reminds me of the Horrible History books, but Captain Crave wants the perfect pet, you might say he craves it, ehhhh?
• Pirate Stew– told in rhyme and lots of great illustrations, it’s a fun read
• How I became a pirate– this book is absolutely adorable. I also thought it was a series, but I was wrong when I went to get a link to it, so enjoy this fun book about a young boy “becoming” a pirate.
• I love my pirate papa– it’s cute, not a lot to say about it.
• Roger, the jolly pirate– Ha ha ha, it’s funny, see! His name is Roger!
• Dirty Joe the pirate: a true story– it’s totally a true story of how he found dirty socks
• Backbeard: pirate for hire– hee hee, it’s cute.
• The pirate’s eye– I have totally forgotten about this one, but it sounds so cute.
• Edward and the pirates– this is a fun story of a young boy imagining his life with pirates.
• Tough Boris– I absolutely adore this book and regularly recommend it to parents when discussing death with their kids, especially the death of a pet.
• Victricia Malicia: a book loving buccaneer– this was checked out when I was grabbing books, but it looks like a fun book to read

Some other great booklists to check out

I like to make booklists for y’all to use, so let me pull a few for you to check out.

• Nest book list
• Octopus booklist
• Sun booklist
• Elephant booklist
• Mystery Chapter booklist

Historical Fiction Pirate Books

These are fictional books about historical persons. I find this to be an interesting thing for picture book level, because sometimes these are categorized in nonfiction, and some are categorized in fiction. I am only putting the ones here the library has categorized as fiction.

• The Pirate Meets the Queen– an Irish “Grandma” meets with Queen Elizabeth and promises to stop pirating, maybe? Adorable book that may or may not have happened, it’s a bit of a family legend and there are some letters that may have happened.
• Pirate Attack!– I suspect if this wasn’t a leveled reader this would have been in nonfiction, so I’m putting it in the historical fiction as it talks about Blackbeard
• Robin Hook, pirate hunter!– I am not entirely sure this is based on historical persons, but it’s such a great book and it fits more in the style of the books here, so I’m putting it here
• Blackbeard’s Last Fight– I very distinctly remember reading this when my kids were in preschool and we were studying one of the Carolinas and my shock as I turned the page and there was his dead body just floating in the water, as I had foolishly not preread the story, still it’s a good book and I do recommend it if you preread it to know if your kids are good for it.