How I Became a Pirate

Average customer rating:

Great illustrations and totally entertaining story
Great Pirate Book
great fun
Away My Hearties to a great read
great book

How I Became a Pirate
Melinda Long
Manufacturer: Harcourt, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Action & Adventure | Literature | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

Humorous | Literature | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

General | Literature | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

Picture Books | Ages 4-8 | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

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Diary of a Worm
Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs

ASIN: 0152018484

For boys who want to know the facts, this book has the answers!.......2007-04-10

Good book, I thought one thing was missing, things parents should know about the book.......2007-08-07

Healthy straight forward guild to discuss what all young men are facing........2007-07-06

Awkwardness is Gogol's birthright. He grows up a bright American boy, goes to Yale, has pretty girlfriends, becomes a successful architect, but like many second-generation immigrants, he can never quite find his place in the world. There's a lovely section where he dates a wealthy, cultured young Manhattan woman who lives with her charming parents. They fold Gogol into their easy, elegant life, but even here he can find no peace and he breaks off the relationship. His mother finally sets him up on a blind date with the daughter of a Bengali friend, and Gogol thinks he has found his match. Moushumi, like Gogol, is at odds with the Indian-American world she inhabits. She has found, however, a circuitous escape: "At Brown, her rebellion had been academic ... she'd pursued a double major in French. Immersing herself in a third language, a third culture, had been her refuge--she approached French, unlike things American or Indian, without guilt, or misgiving, or expectation of any kind." Lahiri documents these quiet rebellions and random longings with great sensitivity. There's no cleverness or showing-off in The Namesake, just beautifully confident storytelling. Gogol's story is neither comedy nor tragedy; it's simply that ordinary, hard-to-get-down-on-paper commodity: real life. --Claire Dederer

Lahiri takes you deep into Bengali culture, American culture and all that brings to fore........2007-08-29

''Some are funny. Some are painful. Some are unpleaseant. Perhaps this is why I have remembered them so vividly. All are true.''.......2006-09-02

Bonus Content from Frank Portman

Frank Portman (aka Dr. Frank) is not just an author, he's also a musician. We were lucky enough to get a few tracks and a few words from the man behind King Dork, his band The Mr. T. Experience, and the relationship between his book and his music.

"King Dork"
This is the "title track" for my new book. No matter how many times I say that (and I've now said it at least twice by my count) it still sounds strange...Anyhow, I wrote this song for my band, the Mr. T Experience, back in the mid-nineties (you can hear the electrified rock and roll version on the MTX album The Mr. T Experience... and the Women Who Love Them). While I was gingerly, sheepishly exploring the idea of trying to write a book, and not really knowing where to begin, Krista Marino (who was to become my editor at Delacorte) suggested that I try to turn a song into a novel as a way of getting started. I can't remember why I settled on "King Dork" as the song to "novelize," but I started thinking about the narrator/character of this song and after quite a bit of staring at a blank Word document and banging my head against the bar I eventually started typing. I didn't tell anyone at the time, but for months the file entitled "King Dork_(novel)_ms" had only the words "there's no way I can write a whole book, absolutely no way, who am I kidding?" on it. The fact that this did turn into a sort of novel in the end continues to mystify me. So this is an acoustic recording of the song that started it all, in effect. "I'm King Dork and I want you to be my Queen..."

Listen to "King Dork"

"Thinking of Suicide"
The narrator of King Dork, Tom Henderson, has a band and is trying to figure out how to play his guitar and how to write songs. He writes several songs through the course of the book, and I thought it might be fun actually to come up with the songs rather than just alluding to them in the text. The songs were written by me "as Tom Henderson," know what I mean? "Thinking of Suicide" is one of the first complete songs Tom writes. The title comes from an informational pamphlet for troubled teens handed out by the school. He likes the drawing of the girl on the cover. "This would make a pretty good song," he thinks: "all I had to do was give the girl a name and feel sorry for myself while pretending to be her. And figure out some lyrics and chords and stuff." This song, which incidentally ends up echoing through and complicating his family life, his social life, and his psychological life, is the result.

Listen to "Thinking of Suicide"

"I Wanna Ramone You"
This one is a little hard to "set up," but I'll give it a shot. There are three strands all tangled up in this song. Strand A: Tom is doing research on the life and times of his mysteriously deceased father, and part of that involves poring over ancient texts like the Bible and The Catcher in the Rye. It's a long story, but in the course of this research he inadvertently learns that the French verb ramoner (which literally means "to scrub out a chimney") can be used as a sexual metaphor. As a rock and roller, he of course immediately thinks of the Ramones, and, voilà, a new English euphemism for sex is born - I ramone, you ramone, he, she or it ramones... (This is useful to him, as it gives him a much cooler metaphor for sex than any of the other ones available; and it proved useful to the author, i.e., me, as well, for pretty much the same reason.) Strand B: Tom is taking Advanced French, which he describes as "a form of the French language in which only the present tense is used. Primarily employed for telling time and for describing the activities of this one guy named Jean and this other guy named Claude." So in writing his song about the timeless power of love, he decides to include some sophisticated, romantic French phrases in the lyrics. Strand C: He has this pretty big crush on a girl from a neighboring town, so he writes a song about her. (As one does in those situations.) "I Wanna Ramone You" is the result, one of his first full-on love songs.

Listen to "I Wanna Ramone You"

Book Description

Tom Henderson (a.k.a. King Dork, Chi-mo, Hender-fag, and Sheepie) is a typical American high school loser until he discovers the book, The Catcher in the Rye, that will change the world as he knows it. When Tom discovers his deceased father’s copy of the Salinger classic, he finds himself in the middle of several interlocking conspiracies and at least half a dozen mysteries involving dead people, naked people, fake people, ESP, blood, a secret code, guitars, monks, witchcraft, the Bible, girls, the Crusades, a devil head, and rock and roll. And it all looks like it’s just the tip of a very odd iceberg of clues that may very well unravel the puzzle of his father’s death and–oddly–reveal the secret to attracting semihot girls.
Being in a band could possibly be the secret to the girl thing–but good luck finding a drummer who can count to four.

Customer Reviews:

Excellent, excellent voice-- I fell in love with it........2007-09-27

The boy narrating this story has a perfect teenage voice-- funny, a little too smart and self-conscious about it, alternately defensive and searching. I was in love with it after the first page: I handed the book to someone else with instructions to read the first page. She loved it too. I had a hard time getting the book back.

The voice keeps its magic all the way through. I liked the device of using a class assignment of one of those "30 days to a better vocabulary" books to justify the narrator's use of words most teenagers wouldn't use.

The events in the book were nicely balanced between realism and farce. Some plot points were a little larger than life, but nothing too over the top.

Four stars instead of five? Near the end, the book veered off track on the murder-mystery subplot and lost steam. It recovered a little before the very end, but not fully. This was the last ten pages or so: suddenly I just wasn't interested in picking the book up and finishing it.

I feel this book is aimed at people my age (late 30s) more than at teenagers. There's something fishy when I know more than half the bands mentioned in the book. Boomer-resentment and Catcher In The Rye backlash are also Gen X phenomenon, I suspect. It didn't bother me, but I can understand why other reviewers called the book dated.

Beautiful writing, funny, and well worth the read.

Catcher in the Wry.......2007-09-15

"If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is how my dad died, and what my lousy high school years were like, and how my mother and her aging hippie second husband were occupied, and all that Catcher in the Rye kind of crap, and I feel like going into it, too, if you want to know the truth, so here goes..."

No, KING DORK doesn't start this way, but so large is the shadow of THE CATCHER IN THE RYE that it darn well could. The protagonist, a sarcastic and wry high school dude named Tom Henderson (well, to himself -- he's called "Chi-Mo" among other slanders by the "normal" population of the school), describes himself as a "brainy, freaky, and oddball" kid who's interested in playing in a rock band, creating outrageous titles for songs and albums, and finding out how his father really died.

Tom (self-proclaimed "King Dork") comes from a long and rich literary tradition of precocious teens with good vocabularies and allusions before their years (one reference to Ronald Reagan's "I paid for this microphone" speech was a real giveaway). Still, the reader is willing to go along because Tom is... well... funny. Yeah, it's often immature, geeky teenaged boy humor, but Gen X (as well as Y) should be all over this book -- especially seeing how author Frank Portman goes out of his way to trash the Baby Boomer generation and its (ironically, considering its iconoclastic intents) iconic book, THE CATCHER IN THE RYE.

The plot rolls along at a leisurely pace, and if readers appreciate it, the reasons will have less to do with what happens and more to do with the wonderful characterization of a persecuted but highly intelligent young rocker and his non-stop wise-guy jokes and asides. Plot developments with girls and especially with the search for how his father died stretch credibility beyond the suspension bridge of disbelief at times, but overall, humored readers will be willing to overlook this. Why? In addition to Tom, there's his fellow-loser best bud, Sam Hellerman; his full-throttle hippie step dad, Little Big Tom; his mysteriously sad, hard-smoking and drinking mom; his vocabulary-destroying English teacher, Mr. Schtuppe; his romantic (OK, mostly lusty antics) interests Fiona and Deanna; and the evil vice principal from Hell, Mr. Teone.

I thought KING DORK was a bit (devil head) prolix (inside joke with the devil head, folks), going around 50 pp too long, but still enjoyed it overall. The punch line, when all is said and done, is that a book made to trash THE CATCHER IN THE RYE ultimately pays homage to it. This means that Boomers, too, may take a shining to the book, even though it is quite "young" in tone. It'll be interesting to see what Portman produces for an encore. Hopefully he doesn't hole up in New Hampshire and get all squirrelly on us...

Very Funny and Smart.......2007-08-29

I enjoyed this book a lot--smart, original and funny. Not a whole hell of a lot happens, but it's all about the characters and writing here. A great talent in Portman. Can't wait to see what he does next. Long live The Chi-Mos!!

Yes, the sex is gratuitous and most unlikely!.......2007-08-26

O.K. so I am 49 years old and the only reason I would not give this book a 5 star is that the sex just doesn't seem real. Admittedly I haven't been in High School for 30+ years but I just cannot believe that dorks do any better today or in the late 80's (when I guess Frank was in school) or the late seventies when I was in school. Why would a girl put herself out for a member of a band that stinks?

The voice if the book is really genius until about the last fourth of the book when the sex gets kind of crazy. Even being female and lots older I know this character...I don't really qualify as a "baby boomer" and I certainly wasn't raised by them but there is enough here that would have anyone laughing...I have definitely met these people.

I, unlike the High School teacher(see the reviews!) that read half the book to sophmores and had to quit, would have read the book through BEFORE I started a read a long with the class! If she could have finished without losing her job there is a lot here for discussion of why so little character development of the girls in the book and also what might have been their motivation. Too bad she had to quit the read...

Read the book but be ready for a disappointing ending...

fizzles...........2007-08-19

I did really enjoy this book for about the first third, even half,of the story. But then, a funny thing happened...I stopped caring. I got sick of our hero. I found his comments becoming repetitious. I guess the author deserves credit for allowing his voice to become annoying. I actually think this book is a bit flipped...I think it's too "normal" for me. "Nerdy" outcast likes girl,has social issues, has family quarrels, etc.etc. Kind of typical, frankly. Still, he's a good writer and this book isn't bad...just not as good as its cracked up to be.

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