A pirate yarn sails familiar territory in satisfyingly rollicking fashion.
Subscribers all to the pirate code—“No cryin’ / No dyin’ / No brushing yer teeth! / No stealin’ / No squealin’ / No eatin’ Parrot Pete!”—the ragged crew of Cap’n Bones sets out aboard the battered but seaworthy Dragonfish of Doom in search of hidden treasure. Dorman pairs his rousing (if not always regular) rhyme to swashbuckling scenes of scurvy knaves in typical pirate regalia (Cap’n Bones sports both pegleg and hook). They leer at mermaids with snaggle-toothed glee and weather hazards from butt-biting sharks to wild waves on the way to digging up a chest full of gold coins and more. “There be trinkets, / There be jewels, / There be even a gold chair. / There be goblets, / There be diamonds, / There be pirate underwear!” Young buccaneers along for the voyage will join the general derision that greets a proposal to “buy lace britches—we’ve oodles of riches—and start our lives anew.” Full-bleed, shiny, saturated spreads depict the buccaneers—the very definition of a motley crew—with calculated, joyful excess.
As pirate fare goes, this is far from the only ship on the sea, but it does sail along smartly. (Picture book. 6-8)
