Alfred and the Pirates

Irving Finkel, illustrated by Emily Donegan


This is a book for both boys and girls aged between about 9 and about 14. Mind you, older children - not to mention their parents - have also read it. And enjoyed it. So we think that this is a book that might find a place on any family bookshelf where good stories with pictures are kept.
ALFRED Appletree is fourteen years old. While writing a history project for school about what seagoing pirates were really like he begins to experience overpowering dreams about the horrors of life on a pirate ship. Before he knows it, the pirates take over his own life. Alfred feels he is going mad. There is no-one he can tell. And no-one who would believe what he had to say. As the story winds on its way Alfred faces the bleakest future. Could the help of a history professor and his friend Josephine Jellicoe be enough for him to be escape their terrifying clutches?
EMILY DONEGAN was born in 1990, and, as the book comes out, is 15 years old. She was only 12 when she began the drawings for Alfred and the Pirates. Emily lives in Northern Ireland.
Emily was the winner of the 2003 BBC TV Blue Peter competition to design a poster for the British Museum on its 250th Birthday. Her design, entitled See the World…Under One Roof was chosen as winner out of 7000 entries. It was made into a full-colour poster which was distributed to schools all over the UK, and shown on the London Underground. Today Emily is rarely seen without a pen in her hand. It is her ambition to write and illustrate her own books. This is her first book.

Emily has a real talent and I look forward to seeing lots more of her drawings.
- Quentin Blake