Prince Noah and the School Pirates by Silke Schnee

Prince Noah and the School Pirates by Silke Schnee is the next book in the Prince Noah series and if you liked The Prince Who was Just Himself you will absolutely love the School Pirates.  This book takes you into the world of Prince Noah as he gets his education.  In this book all children are divided into ships to be educated onboard.  The children are divided depending on who or what they were.  There was a ship for boys, one for girls, one for children with eye patches, one for children who had only one leg and a ship for children who didn't learn so fast.  Noah was sent to the school on the sailing ship for children who didn't learn so fast.  Noah's ship was multicolored and looked different from the rest which were decorated according to who was schooled there: girls were pink, boys were on the orange one, the children who couldn't see very well had very high sides.  The children on Noah's boat learned things and also danced in class.  The girls learned to paint and sew but not to learn math.  The boys played sports and their teacher had given up on teaching boys anything but games, diving and climbing.  Each ship had learning based on what everyone thought they could learn but some of the girls wanted to learn math and the other children wanted to be able to learn other things but it had always been done like this and so it continued until the day of the big storm.  The storm carried them off  into pirate territory.  The pirates captured the boats and threw the children in the pirate ship hold. To find out how the children work together to rescue themselves and their teachers read this exciting book.

I loved this book and how it held the attention of the children to whom I read this.  This book discusses the education system still in use in Germany.  This story tells of how education could be improved with what in the U.S.A. we call mainstreaming.  The book is beautifully illustrated and the children will love looking through the pages.  The star of this book series is based on the author's son who happens to have Trisomy 21 commonly called Down Syndrome.  This book is based on what could be accomplished in Noah's life with a change in the education system.
This book was provided by Handlebar for this review.