Captain No Beard: A Flag for the Flying Dragon by Carole P Roman Review

Reviewed by Melody Floyde

When I was asked to review this book I was certain that it would be a hit with my, nearly four year old, son who loves books and is currently into pirates in a big way. He was very excited about the prospect of reading it and we took it away with us on holiday for bedtime reading.

This was our first foray into the world of Captain No Beard and his crew aboard the Flying Dragon and it wasn’t until the very end of the book that we found out that the ship is in fact a bed belonging to a boy called Alexander and the adventures happen in his bedroom as part of his imagination. I assume that if we had read the other books in the series we would have already known this.

In this story the crew were all busy doing different jobs aboard the Flying Dragon getting it ready to sail on another adventure. Everyone had been assigned their own important jobs except for baby Zachary who is the newest, and youngest, crew member so the story focussed on finding a job for him to do to make him feel important and part of the team. He firstly tried his hand at helping the other crew members with their jobs but when this wasn’t successful Captain No Beard found him his own very important job of raising the new flag for the ship.

The story is well written and engaging, and the message behind the book is that all jobs on the Flying Dragon are equally as important and everyone needs to work together as a team or else the ship won’t be able to sail.

The book is a paperback and is very colourful and illustrated with lots of bright and quirky pictures throughout which really kept my son’s attention.

The only downside to the book for me personally,  was that as it is by an American author some of the terms used, for example ‘burpie cloth’ were American and so I had to explain to my son what they meant or change them as I was reading to him but this didn’t detract from the enjoyment of the story.

Overall both myself and my son found this book very enjoyable and we will look out for other Captain No Beard stories in the future.

Rating: 4/5

RRP: £6.99

Available to buy from Amazon here.