Matty LongSalty Dogs

An adorable, lovable bunch of canine pirates! My boys (7, 5) are obsessed with Super Happy Magic Forest books and once I showed them I bought this one, they were beyond ecstatic. Since it arrived 2 days ago, we’ve read it 8 times.Matty Long is an imaginative writer and illustrator who has a really great grasp on making both children and adults enjoy his books. We love this!

Absolutely loved it!Wish the author wrote more books!

Funny and cute book

I bought this book for the children in our family and they were captivated by it. They had read the first two Super Happy books from Matty Long and were eagerly anticipating this new release which lived up to expectations and more! Salty Dogs works both as a quick bedtime story or as a longer read if time permits. Each highly colourful page can be poured over as children look for the key to the unopenable chest or the lost hat. Adults will enjoy the witty captions - I loved the idea of the sat nav mistakenly directing the ship to a whirlpool! This is a terrific book for an older child who loves reading an exciting story or a younger child who enjoys looking at beautifully illustrated pages. A brilliant book!

My 8 year old and 6 year old love the Super Happy series of books so we thought we would try this too and we were not disappointed! The story is simple but fun and the illustrations and jokes are just brilliant. Loads to see and plenty for the whole family to enjoy. More please, Matty Long!!!

Great book child loved reading it good price

I purchased this book for my students since they just loved Matty Long's first two books. They seemed to love this one too - especially the variety and personalities of all the dog pirates. Matty does a great job of combining humor and plot - his books are really for all ages.

Review update - 10 September 2017Following my three star review below, the Salty Dogs had a renaissance in my house, with my children suddenly loving it and wanting to read it every night. I feel compelled to increase my rating to reflect their love of this book. They now know the two song sections off by heart and love singing them.It is still not as good as other similar books in my view - we often skip a lot of the speech bubbles, which aren't as consistently worth reading as others - but definitely worth four stars.______________________________Original review - 20 August 2017My kids (aged 3 and 6) love both the Super Happy Magic Forest books, as did I, so this new book from the same author held great promise. Unfortunately it is a bit of a let down. It is not a bad book by any stretch of the imagination but the magic just isn't there with this one.Why? In my view, primarily due to a poorly-defined plot, and lackluster character development. There is no strong narrative thrust to the story - they are just a bunch of rubbish pirates who go off to find an old treasure chest that they themselves buried some time ago - certainly not as epic as the Super Happy Magic Forest storylines, which had a clear purpose throughout. The characters are not developed particularly well, probably because there are too many of them, same with the various enemy groups. The many speech bubbles often do not have much humour or relevance to the story.My children are not badgering me to read it again and again, or to read all the little speech bubbles (like they did with Super Happy Magic Forest). So a bit of a damp squib, but here's hoping the next book takes on a different theme, as the style of book is one my children love.