by Moe Zilla

Created on: March 02, 2010

Flinn loves dinosaurs - but he's about to meet a pirate. And Giles Andreae combines the two themes together, in "Captain Flinn and the Pirate Dinosaurs". It proved so popular he used the same characters in a sequel - "Captain Flinn and the Pirate Dinosaurs' Treasure." But it's this book where readers first experienced Andreae's unique style of crazy story-telling.

I like how this book delivers on its promise of pirate-y fun. Flinn and his friends fall through the closet into a sunny day on a new pirate ship. The pirate captain - Captain Stubble - decides Flinn can be this ship's captain. Flinn gets to brandish a "gleaming silver sword," and he sails the ship towards a sunny horizon.

I like how the story unfolded very gradually. (Flinn lifted the curtain, and discovers it's hiding a crying pirate captain!) His pirate ship was stolen, but he doesn't know who did it. He remembers that the thieves sang a song, but that only makes things more mysterious.

"It went 'Yo ho ho! Yo ho ho!  Somethingy, something, Go! Go Go!'"

The adventure began innocently enough, when Flinn realizes he's out of colored markers. His schoolteacher sent him to the supply closet, where there's rolls of paper and pots of glue. But at the back of the closet, there was also something shuddering under an old curtain. Flinn hears "Boo-hoo!  Boo-hoo-hoo!" and then, "Sniffle, snuffle, sniffle."

It's a gently-paced story, but there's simple-but-unusual illustrations that help to keep it exciting. Russell Ayta uses straight lines kinked with surprising angles to draw his characters. And he fills the pages with jangly colors like a fluorescent green or an unexpected purple. There's bright colors for the backgrounds, with solid pages of red yellow. But the drawings get more interesting when the pirate captain arrives - and when they finally confront the pirate / Tyrannosaur Rex who's stolen the captain's ship!

A great battle begins, with waves on the water and a black cloud of smoke. The angly illustrations add an exciting sense of confusion, with glimpses of Flinn and his friends swinging into the rigging of the swaying yellow ship. But it's viewed from the ship's prow, which gives a strange shape to the outline of the ship - especially with diving dinosaurs leaping past it into the ocean to escape Flinn's furious onslaught!

All the dinosaurs jumped overboard except the Tyrannosaurs Rex, who roars and drools through his sharp yellow teeth. Captain Flinn challenges him to a duel, and the dinosaur pirate threatens to cut him up into little pirate sausages. And then barbecue him, and then eat him, "with too much ketchup."

"Oh no, you're not!" yelled Captain Flinn, and charged…

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