Great Answer to an uncomfortable question: Is Your Dad a Pirate?

Children are naturally inquisitive, and they usually don’t have filters, so when they see something or someone who looks different, they tend to ask questions—much to the chagrin of their parents. And when you’re young and it’s your parent who is the recipient of stares and questions, it might be embarrassing.

                Sadly, for many years we’ve been a nation at war, and war has casualties. Not all of them come home in body bags. Some have prosthetic limbs, or hooks where there should be a hand. Others lose the use of an eye, and for long periods of time have to wear an eyepatch. 

                Bad enough for the service member who for the rest of his life will have to deal with the price of war, and horrible for that man, or woman’s, young children.

                And then along comes this wonderful book by Tara McClary Reeves Is Your Dad a Pirate? (2017, Mascot Books), with its marvelous illustrations by Daniel Fernandez.  Dad has come home from war, wounded, and bearing the marks of those wounds.  With his eyepatch and a hook at the end of his arm, he might be mistaken for a modern day Captain Hook. No wonder all the kids who see him point, stare and often ask: Is your Dad a pirate?

                And Reeves puts a twist on the story, as she gives the man’s daughter the perfect answer: No he’s not a pirate, he’s a hero.

                Such a difficult subject for anyone to understand, much less a small child, but this book may just help a lot of embarrassed parents of inquisitive children, not to mention the children of today’s real heroes.

My friends at ICON media provided me with a copy of this book to review AND an extra copy of this book as a giveaway.   If you’re local and interested… first to request it gets it.

5/5