Buck & Ears Pirate Detectives – at a glance
The School Reading Lists’ five word review: Pirates, mermaids, investigation, humour, clues.
Children’s book title: Buck & Ears Pirate Detectives.
Children’s author: Jennifer Bell.
Children’s illustrator: Sarah Horne.
Genre: Children’s fiction.
Published by: Walker Books.
ISBN: 9781529519518.
Recommended for children aged: 6-9.
First published: Paperback May 2026.
This children’s book is ideal for: younger readers who like humorous, fast-moving, books where they have to work out what’s happening alongside the main characters.
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Our review:
Buck and Ears had only just taken charge of their first pirate ship when the crew mutinied and set them adrift tied to a barrel! Looking for another vessel with very little money isn’t easy, but that is the least of their worries! The scariest pirate of all, Captain Bloodfang, wants them to find her best friend, a mermaid called Valentina Vermicelli. The price of failure is too awful to think about!
With their new crew, who, to be fair, aren’t your normal pirate types, Buck and Ears begin looking for the missing mermaid while also trying to work out who kidnapped her in the first place. Time is running out, however. Can the five rookie detectives discover what happened, or will their first case be their last?
Our verdict:
The book title alone gives you a hint as to the nature of this book. It is clever, a little bit silly, and fun from start to finish. The storyline, as is to be expected for this age range, is light-hearted, with likeable characters, who are a mix of humans and animals, and clues which, although not glaringly obvious, are easily discovered if you read carefully.
Buck & Ears Pirate Detectives isn’t a book with puzzles or other visual clues. Instead, as with detective fiction for any age, the discoveries are made through interviews and observations, and the notes are made of everything they find out. This gives the reader the opportunity to work things out for themselves and hopefully beat Buck and Ears to the punch.
Teaching points and book club discussion ideas:
- The title of this book is very clever. Did it make you laugh, and did you know why the author at the start of the story was called Agatha Fishty?
- If you were a pirate, what would you call your ship?
- Buck and Ears were rubbish pirates but quite good detectives. Which would you rather be?
- The crew of the Agatha Fishty weren’t like other pirate crews. How successful do you think they would have been if Buck and Ears had been real pirates?
- Ears took notes on everything they did, which meant they were able to work out who was responsible and solve the case just in time. Did this help you come to the same conclusion?
- The boat Buck and Ears bought was a bit of a wreck. What type of vessel do you think they will have in the second book?
- Buck said that you needed five crew members to sail a pirate ship. If you got the chance to join the crew, what job would you want to do?
- Sample chapter.
- Free activities to download.
Many thanks to Walker Books for the review copy.
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