Customer Reviews

Pirates & Buccaneers Coloring Book (Dover History Coloring Book)

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While Peter Copeland, the illustrator of this coloring book has done excellent artwork, I was disappointed in the lack of action scenes.

I was led to believe by the cover on the coloring book that it would be showing scenes of pirates and buccaneers doing various things on board their ships. Except for maybe two scenes, I got page after page of a pirate, some famous but many just representing pirates in general, doing nothing more than flourishing his weapon, a gun or a sword, while occupying the single page by him or herself. (Two women pirates are shown.)

Since pirates are not particularly fashion plates with beautiful clothes, there was little point in illustrating them this way. I have no idea whether this was Dover's idea or Mr. Copeland's. Mr. Copeland's Western Pioneering coloring book showed action scenes and was delightful but this one was somewhat disappointing.

I did find the information about the pirates interesting, but would have definitely preferred action scenes.

The pictures of the individual pirates are large and a child of 6 or older could probably color them without much problem.

There are small illustrations of a ship in the background of many of the pictures. Although I am an adult colorer, I did not try to do the tiny details of the ships, just colored it all one color, and I would think a child could do that as well.

While the book itself is strictly a coloring book. It does cite historical references for each plate and give a small account of each individual. Some plates are generic pirates of a certain era and some are actual pirate personalities. I have used the book to supplement my Junior High lectures on Pirates as related to History and Liturature.