About the book: year / On my fifth birthday, my dad gave me a book about pirates with incomprehensible squiggles of text. However, what did abstruse words mean if salty splashes, raised by the painted sea breeze, flew at me from the bright illustrated pages? The yards on the high masts creaked, the sails flapped in the wind like freshly washed laundry on a line. The deck smelled of wood shavings, tart, like Grandpa Alejandro's carpentry shop. And over all this beauty a black flag with a white skull and two crossbones began to flutter..