Exhilarating pirate fare.
The terror of the seas is not flesh-and-blood; he’s all skin-and-bones!
Surfing the ocean on a detached hatch, the Skeleton Pirate waves his cutlass and declares, “I’ll never be beaten!” He vanquishes a giant patchwork sea serpent, but a full ship’s complement of living pirates chains him up and throws him into the briny deep. Luckily, a friendly mermaid with a skeleton key swims by and frees him—but an enormous whale swallows them both. Inside its belly is a huge array of priceless pirate swag, including a golden ship encrusted with jewels. The Skeleton Pirate hatches an escape plan; he and the mermaid travel through the whale’s insides to a rounded door right at the ear. Opening it carefully, the Pirate tells the whale all about the booty in his stomach. “No wonder I feel so ill,” the whale declares. The Skeleton Pirate says he knows exactly what to do. He and the mermaid load up the golden ship and sail away into the sunset. Dropping to one knee in front of the mermaid, he produces a diamond ring and says, “I think I’ve been beaten at last.” Both Lucas’ over-the-top yarn and loopy larger-than-life ink-and-watercolor cartoon illustrations wink at readers while producing one clever surprise after another.
Exhilarating pirate fare. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: May 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-7636-6107-6
Page Count: 30
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: March 26, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
A sweet, if oft-told, story.
A plush toy rabbit bonds with a boy and watches him grow into adulthood.
The boy receives the blue bunny for his birthday and immediately becomes attached to it. Unbeknownst to him, the ungendered bunny is sentient; it engages in dialogue with fellow toys, giving readers insight into its thoughts. The bunny's goal is to have grand adventures when the boy grows up and no longer needs its company. The boy spends many years playing imaginatively with the bunny, holding it close during both joyous and sorrowful times and taking it along on family trips. As a young man, he marries, starts a family, and hands over the beloved toy to his toddler-aged child in a crib. The bunny's epiphany—that he does not need to wait for great adventures since all his dreams have already come true in the boy's company—is explicitly stated in the lengthy text, which is in many ways similar to The Velveteen Rabbit (1922). The illustrations, which look hand-painted but were digitally created, are moderately sentimental with an impressionistic dreaminess (one illustration even includes a bunny-shaped cloud in the sky) and a warm glow throughout. The depiction of a teenage male openly displaying his emotions—hugging his beloved childhood toy for example—is refreshing. All human characters present as White expect for one of the boy’s friends who is Black.
A sweet, if oft-told, story. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-72825-448-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Wonderland
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2022
Deeply familiar but infused with 21st-century smarts; expect cries for repeated reads.
Two acclaimed creators retell a fairy-tale classic.
Employing a conversational style, Barnett offers a fresh and immensely entertaining take on an old story, much as he did with The Three Billy Goats Gruff, illustrated by Jon Klassen (2022). A miller (“a nice enough guy, but he had a big mouth”) encounters the king and, seeking to impress him, falsely claims that his daughter can spin straw into gold. What follows is the classic story, replete with spinning wheels and small men who make clandestine deals with the desperate for their offspring. While never diverging from the original, Barnett nevertheless allows his miller’s daughter, if not a name (on purpose, it turns out), then hobbies like “whittling sticks and catching tadpoles with her bare hands.” This miller’s daughter is still caught in the machinations of the men around her, but Barnett demonstrates that her love of the woods is key to her defeating Rumpelstiltskin. His sly retelling is perfectly complemented by art that at times resembles classical portraiture. Ellis also harkens back to fairy-tale images of yore with both lushly illustrated gouache pictures and small interstitial black-and-white spot art. Characters present white.
Deeply familiar but infused with 21st-century smarts; expect cries for repeated reads. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781338673852
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Orchard/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
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