Now Available: The Big Book of Little Pirate Mazes

As I was finishing The Big Book of Little Princess Mazes, I realized that though title and story line of the book would appeal only to little girls, the mazes would appeal to little boys as much as they would to little girls. I thought it might be fun to see if I could take the mazes and connect them with a completely different story line that would appeal to a very different audience. For some reason the pirate theme popped into my head.

Once I started sketching the book, I realized that the book would be much easier to do and a much better product if I opened it to a wider selection of mazes. In the end only about one third of the maze designs used in the Princess book remained in the Pirate book.

To give the book a more "piratey" flavor, I designed several special pirate maze typefaces. The book has two anchor-themed mazes:

as well as two mazes that have a helms-wheel motif.

The skull and crossbones motif appears in at least five mazes scattered throughout the book. Each is a bit different not only in appearance but in the way the pieces connect. The one shown below connects horizontally, vertically, and diagonally.

Plus there are a couple of other new maze designs, such as this one that appears on the back cover.

 The book is designed to appeal to boys approximately four to eight years old. Children vary a lot in their interest in and ability to solve mazes, so it is hard to pin down an exact age. The book not only has a theme of pirates, but it has a narrative that flows through the book that includes pirate stories as seen through the eyes of small boys.

Below is the cover. You should be able to see a skull-and-crossbones design.

Although this book was started when The Big Book of Little Princess Mazes was largely completed, it was finished at the same time. It is available from Create Space and Amazon.

The blurb for for the book reads:

The Big Book of Little Pirate Mazes is a maze storybook in which a story line is illustrated with mazes. It is a big book, with over 100 pages of mazes, many of which use a tessellation pattern as the foundation of the maze. The story line has unexpected twists and turns as well as some dead ends, and it pays homage to several literature classics. No solutions are provided. Some of the mazes are very easy, but even those that are a bit more difficult can be solved by any child with patience and trial and error. The Big Book of Little Pirate Mazes will provide hours of entertainment for young boys and girls who like pirates and stories of sea voyages.

 For the book's introduction, see here.