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Publication Date: April 1, 2007 | Age Range: 8 and up | Series: Vampirates (Book 1) | Lexile Measure: 710L (What's this?)
Twins, Connor and Grace, never dreamed that there was any truth to the Vampirate shanty their father sang to them before he died, but that was before the two were shipwrecked and separated from each other. For Connor, who is taken aboard a pirate ship, there's the chance to learn to swordfight, but for Grace, aboard a mysterious ship of vampire pirates, the danger is great. What will it take for them to find each other?
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Justin Somper is a bestselling author in the UK. His Vampirates books have received international acclaim and have been published in over 20 languages. He lives in London.
Product Details
Age Range: 8 and up
Paperback: 352 pages
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers; Reprint edition (April 1, 2007)
Justin Somper is an exciting creative talent in children's book publishing. Beginning his career as a writer/editor for Usborne, he joined Puffin Books as a publicist in 1992 and moved to Random House as Children's Publicity Director in 1996. In 1998, Justin broke free to become one of the UK's first specialist children's book publicists. He has since worked with Anthony Horowitz, Louise Rennison, the Roald Dahl literary estate and the Narnia literary estate amongst others.
Now, Justin has made the transition from leading book publicist to bestselling author with the Vampirates sequence. The first title, Vampirates: Demons of the Ocean debuted in 2005. Justin was dubbed "The Next Big Thing" by Sunday Times Magazine while, in Waterstone's "Harry Potter Report", the chain's buyers selected Demons of the Ocean as their top recommendation for fans of Harry Potter. The Sunday Times said Vampirates "promises to be an addictive series". The Evening Standard welcomed "a vivid and bloodthirsty debut", whilst The Times acclaimed "a clever combination of two genres that could make it as popular as Pirates of the Caribbean".
With Demons of the Ocean, Justin won the Birmingham KS3 "Explores" Book Award and the Solihull Children's Book Award. He was runner-up in the North East Children's Book Award and short-listed for the prestigious Red House Children's Book Award. Justin's work has also won praise from fellow children's book authors including Darren Shan who calls it, "An intriguing mix of piracy and vampirism. Justin Somper has brought new terrors to the blood-drenched seas - bravo!!!"
The Sequel Vampirates: Tide of Terror was published in the UK in August 2006. It was book of the month for the Daily Telegraph's Family Book Club (with a rave review from Carol Thatcher - "I was swept along by the story... entertaining, relevant, interesting and thoroughly commendable") and Blue Peter Book of the Month. Tide of Terror instantly became a top 20 children's books bestseller.
In 2006, Justin made debut appearances at the Hay Festival of Literature, the Edinburgh International Book Festival and the Cheltenham Festival of Literature, as well as visiting schools and libraries throughout the UK. Particular highlights included an event on the deck of the Cutty Sark and a very enjoyable return to his old primary school in Hatfield.
Vampirates goes Global 2006 saw the release of many of the international editions of Vampirates growing the global phenomenon. The US edition of Demons of the Ocean published in October 2006 and has garnered strong reviews. "This fantastic tale will find many fans," said School Library Journal. The Spanish edition of Vampiratas: Demonios Del Oceano has sold over 30,000 hardback copies and already been reprinted five times. Vampirates has been promoted on the Warsaw metro and in Brazilian cinemas. The Vampirates books are now available in 23 territories wordwide.
World Book Day In 2007 the Vampirates reached new heights as Justin was invited to write a "£1 book" to mark the 10th World Book Day in March. Vampirates: Dead Deep achieved number 7 in the children's books bestseller lists and number 11 in general bestsellers.
Blue Peter Star Author In March the same year, Justin was asked by Blue Peter to be the show's first online "Star Author". For this, he wrote a weekly blog on the Blue Peter site for 20 weeks from March to June. During July and August 2007, Justin embarked on his first foreign author tour - in Australia, meeting fans in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth. On his return to the UK he appeared again at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, the Bath Children's Book Festival and the Windsor Children's Book Festival.
"Just read it" The much anticipated fourth Vampirates novel, Black Heart was published in March 2009. It was widely praised.
"Readers who like their fiction fast, funny and a little gory will lap up Vampirates." The Irish Independent
"Page-turning, award-winning, genre-busting fiction." The Daily Telegraph
What's next? The fifth book in the Vampirates sequence, Empire of Night will be published in March 2010 in the UK and in August 2010 in the USA. To mark the publication Justin will be touring in the UK in March and USA in September 2010.
Well shiver-me-timbers! Get ready to be washed away by this exciting, swashbuckling adventure. VAMPIRATES is the story of Connor and Grace Tempest, twins and children of the lighthouse keeper of Crescent Moon Bay on the East Coast of Australia in the year 2505. The story begins with the two young children getting out of bed in the middle of a violent thunderstorm. They wander up to the lamp room to watch the glory of the lightening and churning water with their father. In order to ease their mind, their father sings their favorite sea shanty.
"I'll tell you a tale of Vampirates
A tale as old as true.
Yea, I'll sing you a song of an ancient ship,
And its mighty fearsome crew."
The twins are finally coaxed back into bed after several verses of the eerie song and settle in for the night.
Seven years later, Connor and Grace's father dies, leaving them penniless and homeless. The kids aren't strangers to the stares and whispers that occur whenever they walk by because they've been dealing with it since the day they came to the lighthouse. They've always felt like outcasts, never quite fitting in.
People in town couldn't figure out why Connor was so much better at sports than the rest of the kids, even when he neglected practice for weeks. Grave provoked equal suspicion - from both teachers and classmates - with her unusual wide-ranging knowledge and strange notions about things far beyond her age and station in life. Since they knew they'd never feel at home in Crescent Moon Bay without their father, the twins decide to take off in their father's boat and take their chances at sea, rather than moving in with the cold, local banker or going to the orphanage....
Their first night on the ocean a huge storm crashed down on them, tearing their little boat apart. As hard as they tried, they couldn't stay together through the churning water. Thankfully, they are rescued and brought safely on board another vessel; however, not the same one. Connor is pulled aboard a pirate ship named the Diablo and Grace is rescued by the Vampirate ship. Desperate to find each other, they both plead with the captains to go back and search for the other. Both are told there isn't a chance the other would have survived. Neither lose hope and know they'll see each other again.
Connor sets about learning the ways of a pirate. He is assigned chores, makes friends, and receives sword fighting lessons. He participates in a raid on another ship and helps acquire booty for the crew. Grace, meanwhile, stays locked in her cabin, told not to even look out the window. She overhears weird conversations about feasts and witnesses strange things like candles that never extinguish, food that appears out of nowhere, and has the overwhelming need to sleep every time she eats or drinks anything. Grace has one person that she talks to named Lorcan, who has been sworn to protect her from the crew. At first, Grace doesn't understand the reason for the isolation. She doesn't realize that some members of the crew aren't happy with the captain's feeding schedule and wouldn't think twice about disobeying an order. She finds out the hard way when she slips out of the cabin and doesn't make it back before nightfall.
VAMPIRATES is told in alternating chapters from both Connor and Grace's point of view. The reader witnesses the growth in both twins as they are forced to make their way alone for the first time. Their devotion and loyalty to each other is touching and adds to the overall hopeful feeling in the book. Once you dive into this adventure you'll hate having to come up for air.
With all the media hype about vampires these days, coupled with the raging success of The Pirates Of The Caribbean, it was only natural that eventually somebody would couple the two together in a contemporary novel.
Justin Somper's book is an easy read - watching my son fly through the pages while eagerly anticipating what would happen next was a great experience.
As with all serial novels, once you reach the end of Book 1 - you are left with a sense of closure, but also the thrill of wondering what the next book will bring.
On the parental side, seeing that the novel attempts to withhold some of the bloodthirsty images that pirates typically are depicted as was welcome - and the bloodsucking of vampires was also held in check.
I only hope that the future installments of this novel (not yet read) tread as careful a balance to remain accessible yet 'safe' reading for young readers.
This book has a fun combination of two of the most romanticized characters of literary history, pirates and vampires (as you can no doubt surmise from the title). At first I was inclined to mock the pirate craze that started as of 2003, but I humbly retract the mocking. Who could have thunk that vampires and pirates together would make such an appealing combination?
The story follows Grace and Connor Tempest, twins who are separated by a storm and each rescued, without the other's knowledge, by a different pirate ship. Connor makes friends with eccentric pirate captain Molucco Wrathe, who seems at times to be a cross between Jack Sparrow and a glam rocker, and at other times a nice, fatherly sort. The crew instantly take to Connor and offer him a chance to train as a pirate. He accepts, but only because he's almost sure Grace is alive and knows that pirate skills will come in handy if he has to rescue her.
And boy does she need rescuing. Unbenownst to her, Grace is on the ship of the titular Vampirates, and her well-being lies in staying out of sight of all but the two vampires who helped her aboard. Lorcan Furey is a 709-year old who "crossed" at age 17, and is still as nice and sweet as he probably was as a human that age (let him near so much as a dried drop of blood, though, and he gets rather TOO caring). The captain is a mysterious fellow who speaks in weirdly commanding whispers and refuses to let his face be seen. He knows who Grace is, and it seems he knows all about Connor, too . . . These two are the "good" vampires, the ones who, for the time being, have her safety at heart. But then there are the others, particularly the more-than-usually bloodthirsty Sidorio, who scorns the captain's courtly approach to vampirism.... For all the danger and all the warnings to stay hidden in her cabin, curious Grace can't resist the temptation to go exploring past dark. She discovers more than she's ready for, and is in turn herself discovered--not least by the book's most surprising character. You expect pirates and vampires and even a ship's cook in a tale of this nature, but this new person is something else!
Both Grace and Connor are fully realized individuals in their own right and their seperate trials and triumphs are equally engaging. So much so that you hardly notice that the book is nearly all groundwork and next to no questions are actually answered. It is established that the Vampirates are real, and that the beautifully penned sea shanty sung throughout is based in fact.* That is all. And yet the story is told with such skill that it was quite near the end of the book before I realized it couldn't possibly wrap up in the few pages left and there would HAVE to be a sequel, or maybe even more than one sequel. Huzzah and rejoicing! The next book is due in June, and I urge anyone who loves a good swashbuckling, vampirate-y adventure to reserve a copy.
There is one piddly detail that seemed to stick out (and at least one other reviewer noticed it, too). This is that the book starts in 2505 and then skips ahead to 2512. It's the far distant future, yet with few exceptions, the world is 17th or 18th century in tone. Ships are galleons and schooners, and the pirate costume is the more appealing picturesque sort from that earlier era (cutlasses and broadswords included). Could pirating fashions really have carried over eight centuries? Particularly given that today's real-life pirates look nothing like (I mean, modern pirates dress with a sort of menacing practicality, and carry very unromantic machine-guns and such, and are generally not as entertaining to be around as "Pirates of the Caribbean" has made them out to be), and we're not nearly as far removed from that age as Grace and Connor Tempest are. Or did the world's perspective on appropriate dress and behavior just come full circle some how?
On the other hand, given the perceivable scope of the story, I am willing to bet that the author has his reasons, and that all will be explained, sooner or later. Perhaps this book just wasn't the time for the explanations, and we're all supposed to go "Eh?" and wonder and wait, until he's good and ready to tell us. And I'll bet it will be GOOD when he does.
*The vampirate shanty really is quite haunting, yet I couldn't help noticing how nicely it fits into the theme of Gilligan's Island. Try it!Read more ›
When theTempest twin`s are lost at sea in two different ships! Will they ever find each other? This is one of the best books I have ever read! -S.S. ;)
This is an extremely good read - compelling characters and story line, for a Young Adult novel of course, but it took and made pirate and vampires something in the same - not all vampires are pirates and not all pirates are vampires, so that is good, as well as many of the elements in this I feel kept to the major themes without being overly graphic and it made this novel fun. I look forward to the next book in the series.
