The Pirates Next Door

In Matilda’s neatly trimmed, child-free neighbourhood on Dull-on-Sea, the house next door is for sale, and she yearns for a family to move in. Then the Jolley-Rogers arrive, and the neighbourhood is not impressed with their messy garden, scruffy clothes, and their abundance of cannons and cutlasses; there’s constant hammering from their ship repairing - and they make the postman walk the plank!

Only Matilda is delighted: in Jim she’s found a friend and she alone is sad when they leave. Then the neighbours discover what the pirates have left behind – and Jim’s not forgotten Matilda either ...

Lots of humour; generous page spreads and fold-outs; a bold, cartoon-like style packed with detail; and of course, irrepressibly rakish pirates combine in this entertaining book about looking beyond appearances, which won the Waterstones Children's Book Prize 2012.