Benji the Buccaneer by Craig Cormick and Bill Hope

Benji is offered the chance of his dreams – to skip school and become a pirate for the day. But after battling sea monsters and searching for haunted buried treasure, does Benji have what it takes to be a good pirate?

A new, fast-paced junior fiction series designed especially for 7+ readers. Each gripping tale will keep children hooked and entice them to begin reading independently. Children will be enthralled by the captivating characters.

R O C K E T S

Benji the Buccaneer

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L I T T L E

Look out for further titles in the series, coming this year.

9 781925 059052

Craig Cormick Illustrated by Bill Hope

ISBN 9781925059052

Benji the Buccaneer

Craig Cormick

Illustrated by Bill Hope

LITTLE ROCKETS SERIES:

A new, fast-paced junior fiction series designed especially for 7+ readers. Each gripping tale will keep children hooked and entice them to begin reading independently.

Children will be enthralled by the captivating characters.

Benji the Buccaneer

Look out for further titles in the series, coming this year.

www.littlerockets.com.au Out now:

Craig Cormick Illustrated by Bill Hope

3

First published in Australia 2014

by New Frontier Publishing Pty Ltd ABN 67 126 171 757 Suite 3, Level 2, 18 Aquatic Drive, Frenchs Forest, NSW, 2086, Australia www.newfrontier.com.au Text copyright Š 2014 Craig Cormick Illustrations copyright Š 2014 Bill Hope This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted by the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Enquiries should be addressed to the publishers.

All rights reserved.

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Author: Cormick, Craig, author.

Title: Benji the Buccaneer / written by Craig Cormick ; illustrated by Bill Hope.

ISBN: 9781925059052 (paperback) Series: Little rockets.

Target Audience: For primary school age.

Subjects: Pirates--Juvenile fiction.

Buccaneers--Juvenile fiction.

Other Authors/Contributors: Hope, Bill, illustrator.

Dewey Number: A823.3 Designed by Celeste Hulme Printed in China 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Captain Caelan - the bravest buccaneer of all. CC

Benji stood unhappily at the bus stop, trying to imagine all the things that were worse than the first day back at school after the holidays. So far he had thought of magpies pooping in his undies when they were hanging on the line. Or his older sister using him for make-up practice while he was asleep. Or possibly a zombie invasion.

He was still thinking about zombies when he saw a strange-looking double-decker bus coming slowly up the street towards him. It was black and old and looked a bit bent out 7

of shape, and he heard its engine moaning and groaning as it came up the hill. And it wasn’t even a particularly big hill.

Then, to his surprise, it stopped right in front of him, and the door slowly hissed open.

An old man with a long grey beard looked out the door and said, ‘Well, are you hopping on or not? We haven’t got all day.’

Benji looked up into the bus and saw a few other people in there, but he couldn’t see if they were schoolkids he knew.

‘Ah – are you the school bus?’ he asked.

‘Like – I mean – are you a replacement bus or something?’

They had replacement buses sometimes, when the normal one had broken down, or had been zapped by aliens, or other 8