Captain Vlad and the Mary Rose

The Tudor King Henry VIII’s favourite ship, the Mary Rose, is sailing to Portsmouth to stop the French invasion.This is a story of our narrator Captain Vlad Flea and his scurvy rat crew, including Master Roxton the rat. It is 1545 and they are on a journey to Portsmouth, but the carpenter’s dog, Hatch and the Captain’s hawk are serious dangers that will stop them running around the ship. As Vlad and Roxton create a plan to make the ship safe the reader discovers what it was like living aboard a Tudor ship.Vlad and the Mary Rose is a beautifully hand-illustrated story that shows historical artifacts in context, being used by the sailors as they sail on their last voyage.Will they escape Hatch and make their ship fun again? Each book is meticulously researched and show how people lived on ships in Tudor times. In Vlad and the Mary Rose the story features artifacts from the wreck which are now in the Mary Rose Museum in Portsmouth.’A fantastic, fun adventure that draws children into the realities of life on board Henry VIII’s Mary Rose, from a flea’s perspective.’Professor Suzannah Lipscomb Look inside the mariner’s life hundreds of years ago, before electricity and technology changed everything.Vlad and the Mary Rose is a story that can be read repeatedly revealing layers of information and providing a resource for learning about history and how we interpret it. As with all Vlad Flea books it is a perfect springboard for extending the topic in literacy, art and beliefs as well as history. Learning materials for parents and teachers can be found on the Reading Riddle website. The book finishes with a fact file that includes information about the setting, historical objects, and research behind the story.