Reviews for Pirated!

The average rating for Pirated! based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-05-05 00:00:00 Carlos Maldonado Jr This story was really interesting because the Boxcar Children were searching for stolen valuable and antique coins. My book + Scribd audio. Synopsis: "The Boxcar Children are going on a canoe trip with Grandfather and Aunt Jane. They enjoy paddling across the sparkling lake and camping under the stars. But their trip really gets interesting when they find a mysterious riddle leading them to hidden treasure!"

Review # 2 was written on 2019-06-26 00:00:00 Walter Pattillo I've never read a Boxcar Children book I don't think. As a kid I was into other series but I was in the mood for some mysteries so I added this.  It starts off with the Alden kids getting ready for a canoeing trip with their Aunt Jane. Grandfather drove them to an equipment store to meet her and while there, Henry was explaining to Benny about the lakes they'd be canoeing. There was a woman named Angela who was listening to everything they said. She demanded a topographical map and tried to warn them off, saying there are thunderstorms and wolves and no one around if they get attacked by a wild animal. Grandfather said he didn't know why she was trying to warn them away and they felt like they had another mystery on their hands.  At dinner someone mentioned a break-in at the museum. They didn't take anything but the coin collection was disturbed. A year ago a man named Orville had his coin collection stolen.  The writing was kind of awkward. Aunt Jane picked out a place to camp and Jessie pointed out some ashes and said someone else thought it made a good campsite. No one commented and Aunt Jane an picked she'd get the tents. Later on Aunt Jane said lots of people must camp here and pointed to the ashes, like Jessie hadn't already said it.  Jessie asked where Benny was and looked for him. Aunt Jane said he'd gone to explore without the author ever mentioning him leaving. When did the aunt see that he'd gone when Jessie didn't? They were all right there together.  As the summary had already given away, they found a riddle on a rock that mentioned coins and finding them with a cat with whiskers and no feet and a silver sheet. They all thought about it and instantly figured out what it meant. Aunt Jane told them that every word in a riddle is important and they immediately came up with it being a location: Catfish Lake, because catfish have whiskers and no feet, and a silver sheet is the lake. That was fast.  They kept finding piles of ashes around and Henry concluded it could be one person make fires, and Jessie suggested it was someone trying to keep them from finding the coins. It was so lame! Jumped right into a mystery the moment they got there and they were piecing things together as easy as a snap of the fingers.  In the morning she wrote that they slept until the sun was high in the sky, and Henry commented that it must be almost 9 o'clock. The sun isn't high in the sky that at that time. A man named Lorenzo came up to their camp and started asking all kinds of questions. He looked worried when Benny mentioned the wolf they heard in the night. He told them to worry about strange things going on here. He's a scientist and he's been hearing the animal for a week and seeing fires all over the place though no one else is camping. He even mentioned the weather and told them not to cross the lake because it's dangerous. She seemed more interested in the foods they ate for every meal than in the plot. She was always listing each food item they ate like I gave a crap about it. In a mystery the last thing I care about is what you're having your lunch because it is UNIMPORTANT.  The writing is so unbelievably boring. I couldn't understand why she was writing the things that she was. They got off the canoes and went on land and Benny pointed out the birds they scared away. Aunt Jane said they'll have to find a new place. Henry said they'd be back when they went to eat. I'm wondering what the point is of these birds since they have nothing to do with anything. And she went to the trouble to point out birds with no point whatsoever, when she hadn't even said there were birds there. It was "Look, we're scaring away the geese and loons" and I'm like what geese and loons? She would always make things up all of a sudden like this.  Violet was looking for something to draw. She wanted to draw these rocks with writing on them. Aunt Jane looked and said she was right. Jessie had the idea to go to them after lunch. Henry wanted to wait until later that day when they're on the way, and I'm sitting there wondering why the heck you went to that huge, lengthy trouble to make such a big deal about these rocks, making us want to know what the writing said, and then backing off and putting it off until later. Why bring it up now if you're not going to have the characters go there?  A paragraph later after we read an all-important one about what they did after lunch, reading Sherlock Holmes and such, they went to the rocks, making me wonder why they couldn't have just done it in the first place. Someone had spray-painted Keep Out. On another island they met a stranger who twisted his ankle in a hole he hadn't seen before. All of them looked at each other, realizing they weren't the only ones noticing mysterious things. I don't think a hole qualifies as a mystery. Really, couldn't she have thought of something better than that? What's mysterious about stepping in a hole? Now if you fell brought a camouflaged hole and ended up in someone's net, you'd have a case. Rob acted as suspiciously as Lorenzo had. He said nothing had gone right on the trail but clammed up and wouldn't say any more when they asked him about his trip. He went off alone and didn't come back until the next morning. He acted so friendly, just the opposite of the day before. For some reason, Jessie and Henry went fishing with him alone, and Henry was alone with him while cooking. What kind of a guardian lets their nieces and nephews be alone with a complete stranger?  Aunt Jane did not act like an adult at all. It was rare that she displayed adult behavior. Most of the time she seemed like one of the kids. It felt like the kids were running the show. There were so many times where she was silent when I thought she'd have something to say.  The fog finally lifted and to my surprise, they didn't even think of looking for Henry and Violet. They were lost, didn't show back up, and were left with a stranger. Aunt Jane said they knew the camping plans and she thinks they went ahead to the next location, and they can find them tomorrow. 2 kids wandering the lake with a strange man and she says they'll find them tomorrow. Who are these ppl?  They all went canoeing, Rob joining Henry and Violet. Fog rolled in and the 3 of them got separated from the others. Two men claiming to be forest rangers mapping canoe routes came up and started asking all these questions. Smartly, Aunt Jane didn't tell them much and kept it brief. There were all kinds of red flags though and the stupid kids missed it. They acted like Aunt Jane was worrying for no reason. They knew all the stupid things that had happened, yet Jessie thought they could be trusted because they're rangers. Stupid Benny mentioned the wolf; Jessie told them about Lorenzo and Rob, and when the men asked about the woman, they confirmed they'd seen her looking for a map. Matt asked why they weren't wearing uniforms--hello, red flag!--and when Benny asked what color they are, Matt and Bill gave two different answers. After they left Jessie asked if Aunt Jane thought they were really forest rangers. She knew Aunt Jane was suspicious, and after they'd told them almost everything, then she wonders if they're legit. Why are these kids so stupid?  Henry, Jessie and Rob made it to the cabin, where they found Angela staying. Rob turned white and was nervous around her. Then they discovered all their stuff in the canoe was stolen and both Angela and Rob were suspects because they were both missing when they went to check.   They hashed it all out once the others arrived, and came up with a list of 5 suspects. What a pile. Angela. Lorenzo. Rob. Matt and Bill. They went exploring and found an old house with a well. Jessie put together that the coins were hidden in a well, from the line "so well hidden."  They found a loose stone and a pouch hidden behind it, then very anticlimactically almost 100 gold and silver coins. Of course as they're exclaiming over the coins, Rob comes up because you knew someone was going to. Books are so predictable.  Rob, surprisingly, didn't try to take the coins. He revealed that he's a private detective hired by Mr. Withington to find his missing coin collection. The police had suspected that it was an inside job, someone who must have known the place because they didn't disturb anything in the house but the coins. He'd had an illustrator who vanished after the coins did. Rob said she was Eliza, who looks like Angela but with shorter hair. Mr. Withington's chauffeur disappeared a few weeks ago and he's the second-most suspicious employee.  Everything was written so weirdly and awkwardly. They made a plan not to talk to anyone else. Rob oddly announced that he and Jessie would hide the coins. How random for him to choose her and only her. I wondered why. The others went in the cabin and Matt and Bill were there, covered in splotches from poison ivy. They quickly left and the kids were hypothesizing and analyzing it. What was that all about? Why would they make a fire and then leave? I can't believe rangers camped in poison ivy. Did they leave because of us? Oh my gosh, commenting on every little thing. Just shut up and everybody quit talking so much.  They were canoeing and came upon Angela who tipped over into the river. They saved her and when they got to the dock Grandfather, a policeman, and Lorenzo were waiting. Random to have him there. He'd filed a report on the strange occurrences. I didn't know why he was even there. Just one more character in the mix. Angela admitted that she went by a fake identity and planned the robbery with Matt, the chauffeur. She hid the coins and wrote the riddle on the rock for him to find them. Which made 0 sense. If you steal coins with an accomplice, why would you hide them from said accomplice and then create this complicated game to find them? Why not just tell them where it's at? No one would ever do this. That is so unbelievably unrealistic it's almost laughable. And why wait a year; why hold onto valuable coins for a year, stuff them in a well, and then try to get them back a year later? When I think back on her ridiculous attempt at keeping the kids away from the lake I want to scoff at the behavior of this woman. Matt enlisted the help of his brother Bill. They were going to smuggle the coins out of the country. But a few months after the theft, Angela and Matt broke off their engagement and she didn't want him to get the coins. She "made sure" they set up their tent in poison ivy. Somehow. Not sure how you can do that, and the author apparently wasn't either because she didn't even try to explain. She played taped recordings of wolves howling to scare the kids, lit campfires all over the island, and shone the flashlight at the kids' tent one night. It begged the question of why the heck she went to all this trouble and didn't just take the coins out of the well. Think about it: she spent all this time going around the island playing tapes and lighting fires and shining flashlights, doing everything she could to scare away all these people, and all she had to do was move the coins and problem solved.  She actually wrote the scene where Rob presented Mr. Withington with the coins. I expected it to be so much better. He took the coins but was sad his former employees turned out to be bad. Rob said they planned it before they started working there. Which didn't make any sense. I had been wondering how they knew about the coins and figured Angela hadn't known until she'd been contacted about illustrating the coins for the book. They had to have only known when they worked there unless his collection was widely known somehow.  They wanted to hide them until things died down. A kid asked why Angela didn't get the coins after the breakup and Rob said it's because you can't travel here in the winter. You have to wait until spring. So at least that part was explained. Angela "didn't have time" to get the coins out because she was too busy scaring everyone, which she likes to do. Angela broke into the museum too. It was ironic that the author noticed a gap in the market of exciting stories that were fun and exciting to read for teachers, because this is one of the most boring children's books I've ever read. I didn't take to these kids; I don't like them, and I didn't care about anything that happens. I hope I didn't add too many more of these.  After reading this I don't want to read another because I can tell I'm not a fan and I don't like this style of writing or what passes for a mystery. I was initially going to rate this 2 stars because it wasn't bad, and then I realized I didn't like one thing about it and it was so unbelievably boring and unoriginal that I went with 1. It wasn't interesting at all and didn't even try to be.