FernFolio

Emily Bing is happy to meet Matt Martinez, the boy who walks up her front walk to say hello soon after she and her family move into her Great-Aunt Miranda’s old house.  Matt wants to know if the house is haunted, which it isn’t, but it does contain an odd little room at the top of a tower that is filled with strange objects, including an old wooden sled.  The sled, a Canadian Flyer, is a gift to Emily from her great-aunt and bears a maple leaf on which some mysterious words appear, like a magic spell, to carry Matt and Emily away on an adventure to Canada’s Far North and the second voyage to Canada by one of European’s most famous explorers.
Matt and Emily find themselves aboard the explorer’s sailing ship where they meet sailors who act more like pirates and its rather ill-tempered captain, Martin Frobisher.  Believed to be stowaways, the kids are put to work scrubbing the decks before they catch sight of an Innu boy paddling a small boat near the sailing vessel.  Soon they have clambered down a rope into young Minik’s umiak, and learn that the boy is looking for his friend, Irniq, who has been kidnapped by Frobisher and his men.
Written by Frieda Wishinsky, Beware, Pirates! is the first of the Canadian Flyer Adventures, stories about Matt and Emily’s adventures through this country’s past aboard the magical wooden sled.  These books will appeal to readers from grades 2 to 5, and offer a lot of information about Canada’s history.
FernFolio Editor