Ankles Away by Jenny Moore
Jenny Moore’s recent book, Odelia and the Varmint, fits our theme perfectly! Pirates leap off the pages of her mother’s book and come to life and Odelia forms part of the crew! Read more about this exciting story from author, Jenny Moore!
The waters of children’s books are teeming with pirates of every variety, from jolly, joking buccaneers to dastardly villains who’ll stop at nothing in their search for treasure. Captain Blunderfuss, the titular pirate varmint in Odelia and the Varmint, falls somewhere between the two. When he first leaps out from behind the nursery curtains to dangle Odelia off the end of his hook, he’s every inch the vicious villain, but by the end of their story he’s proved himself a true hero with a heart of gold. Unusually for a pirate, his transformative journey doesn’t occur at sea, however.
Captain Blunderfuss and his sleepy sidekick, Cook, begin life as characters in the book Odelia’s mother is writing. But as readers of all ages will know, characters in books have a wonderful way of coming to life—quite literally in the pirates’ case. The pair are whisked away from their fictional life on board The Sea Lion’s Bellybutton to embark on new adventures on the streets of Victorian London. And in joining their pirate crew, 11-year-old Odelia Hardluck-Smythe sets sail on a life-changing adventure of her own… one that will carry her through the deep waters of grief to happier shores.
The familiar tropes of pirate fiction are all present in Odelia and the Varmint—treasure maps, hand-to-hand combat, hats, eye patches and traditional pirate speak—but with a few landlubberly differences. The treasure map points to Odelia’s own house rather than a desert island, and the hand-to-hand (or should that be hand-to-hook?) combat takes place on a park bandstand rather than a ship’s deck. Even Captain Blunderfuss’s mangled versions of pirate phrases, which are more comic than threatening, sometimes miss the maritime mark:
‘Batten down the hatshops and ankles away!’
It’s clear, however, that the pirates are much more at home on the ocean than on land. The captain’s fictional former life on the seventeen seas has certainly left him woefully unprepared for the bustling streets of London and their bewildering array of ships on wheels. He’s even less prepared for the strict niceties of Victorian society, thinking nothing of breaking into the next-door-neighbours’ bathroom in search of diamonds, or cooking up their priceless ornamental carp for breakfast… and then going back for another one the next day:
‘I didn’t steal nothing, you fish-counting cod-face,’
came the pirate’s reply, as Odelia raced across the lawn
towards the gap in the hedge. ‘I collected them. It’s not
stealing if they swim into your hat, fairs and squares.
That’s asking to be eaten, that is.’
For the pirates, their real-life escapade is an expedition like no other—a trip into strange, uncharted waters, where the rules of the ocean hold little sway. A world with cobbled streets instead of waves and scurrilous thieves who steal babies instead of gold. For Odelia and her family, it’s a voyage away from the stark, half-life they’ve been living since her father’s death towards a new version of happy fulfilment. And for the reader, I hope it proves to be an exciting journey through history, with plenty of rip-roaring adventure and laughter on the way. So hoist the mainsail and ankles away!
Odelia and the Varmint is written by Jenny Moore and published by New Frontier Publishing. It is available from your favourite retailer now.