The Twins The Pirates And The Battle Of New Orleans

Grade 4-6. This watery adventure begins with escaped slave twins, Pierre and Andrew, happening upon a pirate island while exploring the Gulf Coast swampland where their father has left them. The boys have been deliberately set against one another by their master, and are in the awkward process of getting acquainted. Pierre is more outwardly cautious than Andrew, although he eventually realizes that there are many types of bravery. It is December 1814, and the events leading up to the Battle of New Orleans take shape around the brothers as they explore and wait for their father's return. As time passes, the boys realize that something has gone wrong, and they must devise their own plan for freeing their mother and younger sister, who were sold several years before. Unfortunately, the characterization of the twins is slight, with readers usually being told rather than shown how they feel. The third-person narrative is related mainly from Pierre's viewpoint and seems stilted at times. The title may attract readers, but the pacing may not be enough to sustain them. Though not a first purchase, the book provides a new perspective on the Battle of New Orleans, and could be useful in conjunction with historical study of the period, for Robinet's weaving of fact with fiction is accurate and informed.?Robin L. Gibson, Muskingum County Library System, Zanesville, OH
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

An exciting and unusual story about runaway slaves. Twins Pierre and Andrew have been rescued from slavery by their father, who left them in a wonderful three-story treehouse that he built in the swamps outside New Orleans and who has gone back to the estate where they were enslaved, to also rescue their mother and sister. When he doesn't return, the twins face the possibility that he is dead. They open his trunk and discover that he was one of Jean Lafitte's pirates; soon they are involved in a plan with Lafitte and Andrew Jackson to aid the Americans in the upcoming battle of New Orleans, and to rescue their family and friends from slavery. Robinet (Washington City Is Burning, 1996, etc.) evokes a vivid swamp setting, interweaves the twins' survival story and historical events, and limns the difficult relationship of the twins, who have been played against each other by a cruel master. Young readers will relish the marvelous details of their diet (in which live snails play a large part), their adventurous expeditions across the swamps, often by swinging on ropes, and many other fascinating features of their unconventional life. (map, glossary) (Fiction. 8-12) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.