Maggie and the Pirate by Ezra Jack Keats

There is an important layer to this story that is quietly implied. Take a look at these text quotes:

"Maggie and her parents lived in an old bus which they had made into a home."

"It was the cage ... I wanted it real bad ... I didn't mean for the cricket to die. My ol'man - he never makes any things for me. He doesn't ever talk to me."

In the illustrations we can see a shanty town and the children are wearing mismatched clothing and they have bare feet. So as an adult reader we know poverty is implied. It is important for our children to see other kids living in very different circumstances even if they don't have any understanding of poverty as depicted in this book. 

Maggie loves her little cricket. He lives in a small cage made by her grandfather. 

When her mother asks Maggie to go to the grocery store she hangs the cage on a tree but when she returns the cage and her little cricket friend Niki are gone. On the tree there is a hand written note that says : "The pirate was here."  Maggie is determined to find this "pirate".  Perhaps the title of this book is a little misleading. The "pirate" is just another kid - a lonely, poor and perhaps mistreated kid - who likes the look of the that cage. When Maggie finally tracks him down there is an accident. The boy is perched in a makeshift tree house. It crashes to the ground and the little cricket is killed. 

"They buried Niki. Maggie wrote his name on a piece of wood and put it over the small grave. Paco picked some flowers and brought them over. Then they sang sad songs."

The boy appears and he explains why he took the cricket and the cage - he is deeply sorry. He takes the cage from Maggie and puts a new cricket inside. 

I love the quite words of the ending. Again so much is left unsaid:

"They all sat down together. Nobody said anything. They listened to the new cricket singing. Crickets all around joined in."

Look at the power words here - together, they listened, joined - the promise of new friends!

I mentioned a few days ago that the library I visit each week have filled a tub with books that have not been borrowed for a long time. One of these is Maggie and the Pirate by Ezra Jack Keats. The books in this school library are generally in almost mint condition but this book is quite worn out which is strange because it has not been borrowed since 2001 and in total it has only been borrowed 14 times beginning in 1985. 

I learnt a new word today reading the Kirkus review of Maggie and the Pirate: 

Unlike Keats' city slums, this palm-treed, riverside shantytown has a ramshackle insouciance.

insouciance means: free from concern, worry, or anxiety; carefree; nonchalant

Now comes the difficult decision for the library. Ezra Jack Keats is a very famous US illustrator and his collage illustrations are wonderful and still fresh all these years later. Unfortunately Maggie and the Pirate is now out of print. There are lots of other Ezra Jack Keats books still available so perhaps the library should be content with these but I do know the Teacher-Librarian likes to hold the "body of work" of significant authors and illustrators. Another issue is the confusion that this book is not really about pirates and perhaps the cover is not very appealing to a modern child even though I do like it. Oh and the topic of actual pirates is a fraught one because real pirates do exist and if your school has refugee children this is a topic you should either avoid or treat very sensitively. 

I have talked about two books by Ezra Jack Keats:

Jennie's Hat

Whistle for Willy

Here are other books by Ezra Jack Keats: