You Had Me at Ninja Pirates

I’m sure there are about a billion things I’ve read/listened to/watched that I could blog about. I think I’ve got a list somewhere actually, but there’s only one I’m choosing to at the moment. Possibly because this is the only one I can think of at the moment.

Truth be told, it’s been at least a few weeks since I’ve read this, but it’s still on my mind, because it’s that good. Story time! (And then—for once—I’ll actually talk about the book.) So, a couple weeks ago for my class I was assigned to a group to do some reading about diversity. I think we both totally missed out on what this assignment was actually about. Just so you know. My partner and I were assigned the Asian group, which is pretty sweet. For one (excuse me while I go back and clean up some sentence fragments. Done? Uh, yeah) Asia is huge and covers a wide variety of cultures—just one example. So we’re handing a list of potential readings to start us out. My partner has a few suggestions of her own. I pick out the one she claims is an adventure novel. Something called Golden Dragon. Now me, being who I am, by which I mean I log onto my library account multiple times a day and have my library card number memorized, go search the Logan library catalog for this book. No dice. But something else comes up—something much better. (The book she meant was Kingdom of the Golden Dragon and I found it deadly boring. I even have literary reasons for finding it so, but that is not the subject of this post. I digress—as always). I always seem to have these serendipity library search moments don’t I?

Flash back a year or so ago. I’m at my old job (I loved that job. On my old abandoned blog I think I did a whole post about just how much I liked that blog. I might dig it up and share it again sometime. I picked my major solely based on that job). I don’t remember exactly how this went down, but one of the fifth graders is reading a book I’ve never seen before (pretty sure I’ve never seen anyone read it since either. It’s pretty under the radar as far as I can tell. I lie, I’ve seen my roommate read it—after I lent him the copy I got from the library. Oh, and I just tried to spell lent as leant. Apparently they’re both words because spell checker isn’t going off on me). So I ask him about it, and he highly recommends it to me. And I trust kids when they recommend books. Well, if it had been a fifth grade girl I might not have. I once wrote a story—upon request—for fifth grade girls and they hated it (The kindergartners loved the story I had for them though). I just might post both of those stories on here—after some editing. After all, both of them were rather rushed. One was fourteen pages I did over the weekend, and the other I did in a single night.

And now for the finale (though I think I might go on for a bit rambling after. We’ll see). The book was Young Samurai: Way of the Warrior. Actually the book I found in that search, if you can remember back that far through my ramblings, was the second one in the series Way of the Sword. Let me just say they were the best things I have read in a long while. I knew I would love the books very early on. The inside flap was the first clue actually. Somewhere in those first few descriptive sentences was the phrase “ninja pirates.” You read that right. Ninja Pirates. It doesn’t get much better. You had me at ninja pirates.

I thought I was done, but I think I promised to actually talk about the book this time. Though I’m sure you enjoyed my long convoluted tale of how I discovered it, I’ll at least give you the setting. Its early 17^th century I believe and the Dutch have a trading monopoly with Japan, because they’re the only European country that knows how to get there. But Jack’s dad knows how, and he’s taken 12 year old Jack on the voyage with him. Unfortunately they shipwreck and then are attacked by ninja pirates. Jack is the only survivor of the crew. He is rescued and then adopted by a samurai. After learning some Japanese Jack goes to school to learn how to be a Samurai.

As I said already, this is one of the best books I’ve read in a long time. If you liked Percy Jackson, Harry Potter, or Rangers Apprentice you must read this book. If only because it has ninja pirates.