Poppy the Pirate Dog

Poppy the Pirate Dog is a book written by Liz Kessler and illustrated by Mike Phillips. The book is suitable for ‘Early Readers’. Blue Early Readers are perfect for sharing and reading together. This is a red Early Reader which is the next step on your reading journey. It was released on 30 August 2012 and published by Orion Publishing. The book is paperback containing about 80 pages with six chapters. The font is a good reading size, simple words and easy to read by school children. Each page is beautifully illustrated with a lot of action.

The story is about a dog named Poppy who is very excited to be going on a seaside holiday.  Poppy’s family bought her a skull and crossbones scarf to wear. She is very excited to be a pirate dog but life as a pirate dog at the seaside is trickier than she realises. She was so scared and spent most of her holiday feeling upset and miserable. When they got home, Poppy was still not back to her normal self and the family realised that poppy is a pirate dog and she needed to find her ideal pirate ship. When they found her ideal ship, Poppy was so happy.

In this story, Mr K learnt how to identify the different cues of dog behaviour like wagging her tail means she is happy, her tail dangling between her legs means she is scared/upset etc. He also learnt about the different activities that you can do at the seaside like fishing, seal spotting, pedal boats and speed boat rides.

Mr K (5 years old) still finds it hard to read some of the words but he is getting there. There are no big or difficult words. It is just that he needs to practise more reading. Overall, this is a fun book to read and learn about sea adventure.