The Ship Captain’s Tale: A Counting Adventure

By: V.A. Boeholt
Illustrated by: Jeff Yesh
Publisher: Five Star Publications, Inc.
Publication Date: May 2015
ISBN: 978-1589852129
Reviewed by: Holly Connors
Review Date: July 29, 2015

Ahoy, Mateys! There’s a new counting book and if you love ‘everything ocean,’ then you need to check it out! It’s a whole lotta fun for the wannabe ship’s captain.

As our story opens, we meet an old ship captain. He’s on a beach, telling a story to some young friends. It’s the story of a wonderful ship, The Queen of the Sea. One day, while the sun is shining and the passengers are enjoying themselves, the Captain of the mighty ship decides to take a nap. He has a terrible headache and needs to rest. However, things don’t always go as planned when the captain of a big ship takes a break.

Right at noon, the ship’s whistle bellowed out the noon whistle. But...but...the whistle didn’t stop. It was loud and piercing and bothered everybody:

One activity director ended the games.
Two passengers stood still.
Three guitarists quit strumming...

...and so on all the way up to twelve birds that scattered overhead.

The crew didn’t know what to do. People tried, but nobody could get the whistle to stop. Finally, one of the ship’s mates decided he had to wake up the Captain. Would the Captain be able to make the whistle stop?

The Ship Captain’s Tale is a fun twist on the traditional counting story. Most counting books I read are all counting and very little story. This one has a lot of story to go with the counting. I also liked how the book counted to twelve rather than ten, introduced ordinal numbers, and also counted backwards from twelve to one. The illustrations are bright and cheerful and mesh perfectly with the story. At the back of the book is a resource guide, a chart of counting to six in nine different languages (as well as English so they can compare), as well as a glossary of ship related words that young readers may not know.

Quill says: The Ship Captain’s Tale is bound to be a hit with youngsters who have a yearning to travel the high seas.