PIRATES DRIVE BUSES

Blister me eyebrows, the pirate from Pirates Eat Porridge (2007) is back. Breathless over-the-top humor from Down Under is the order of the day as siblings Heidi and Billy join their hirsute and logic-impaired friend on a wild bus tour. Joining the oceanic cast on the bus, the children find starfish, crawfish, octopus, the “parrot” who looks like a pig and a pirate named Frances Fallover. It’s hard to say just what’s going on in the wild bus ride, but new readers won’t care. They’ll just move from one nutty situation to another until the bus tour ends with a discovery of the pirate’s lost ship, the SS You Beauty. Wackiness is shored up with clear black-and-white illustrations and lots of repeated words and phrases. Nonsense abounds—but, as the pirate tells us, “Sense is for seagulls.” Kids too old for Mo Willems’s Pigeon books but who love the zaniness of Lane Smith and Dav Pilkey are the right readers for this series. (Fiction. 8-10)