A pleaser for young swashbucklers.
It’s living pirates vs. the other sort when ghost buccaneers repeatedly ransack the town of Dull-on-Sea.
First met as picture-book Pirates Next Door (2012), the nautical Jolley-Rogers family sails back into view in a multichapter yarn—responding to young pirate-loving ex-neighbor Matilda’s plea for help. It seems that every full moon brings dead Cap’n Twirlybeard and his knavish crew ashore in search of both plunder and a certain long lost key. According to Grandpa Rogers, only unlocking the sea chest that contains their scurvy souls can scupper the attacks. Can Matilda and her piratical friend Jim Lad find the missing key, keep it out of Twirlybeard’s clutches, and sneak aboard the spectral pirate ship Black Rat to open the chest at last? Duddle punctuates his larger-than-average prose with theatrical verse (“Some say we’re cursed, some say we’re dead! / We’re in search of a key as you sleep in bed!”) and tucks in plenty of elaborately detailed monochrome illustrations featuring a likewise monochrome cast of comically clueless white landlubbers and leering corsairs in classic pirate garb. A rousingly melodramatic face-off ends as it should, whereupon the Jolley-Rogers sail off once again…and into the clutches of a trio of witchy “sea hags” in the co-published next episode, The Jolley-Rogers and the Cave of Doom. Now, it’s Matilda’s turn to come to the rescue.
A pleaser for young swashbucklers. (glossary) (Fantasy. 8-10)Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7636-8910-0
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Templar/Candlewick
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
No substitute for the original, but an agreeable alternative for younger or less-able readers.
Effective use of light and shadow in the art give this graphic adaptation of the 2003 novel a properly spooky look, but it reads overall more like a summary than a developed story.
Though sticking to a sketchy iteration of the original’s plot rather than the somewhat altered film version (no cave monster, sorry), the tale is told in a visual, cinematic way with an admixture of quick reaction shots and wordless action sequences that allow readers to race along almost as fast as they can turn the pages. The terse exchanges between characters use DuPrau’s words, but as dialogue they sometimes come across as stiff: “…if I go, I must leave Poppy, mustn’t I?” frets Lina. “How can I take her on a journey of such danger?” Still, Asker’s penumbral scenes underground and broad, grassy Eden above are strongly atmospheric and depict both settings and the clearly delineated cast (particularly the grossly corpulent Mayor) in tellingly crisp detail.
No substitute for the original, but an agreeable alternative for younger or less-able readers. (Graphic science fiction. 8-10)Pub Date: Sept. 25, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-375-86821-4
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 7, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2012
The tongue-in-cheek tale goes on, with enticing hints of adventures and revelations to come.
In a third episode set in the (supposedly) witch-ridden Italian town, curious Maria Beppina makes a startling discovery when she stops running from the scary “Clopper.”
Interwoven with events from previous tales, Maria Beppina’s act of courage comes after her cousin Primo hands her the gold ring he has found in a fish. What she subsequently turns to face is not a fearsome monster but a friendly if eccentric old lady who wears one wooden clog and lives with a trio of odd companions. Being something of an outsider, as she and her widowed father have moved to the village from Naples, the usually resolutely honest white girl later concocts for the other children a terrifying yarn featuring a cackling witch and a cooking pot. Her guilt is sharp but short-lived, and by the end she’s going back to revisit her new friend(s). Though as usual Marciano appends a “Witchonary” and a history of the real town, he’s been cagey throughout about whether there are actual witches and demons at work—until now, at least (though he could still be having us on). Blackall supplies a map and festoons the compact-format tale with lively scenes of apple-cheeked children in dress that evokes the 1820s small-town setting.
The tongue-in-cheek tale goes on, with enticing hints of adventures and revelations to come. (Fantasy. 8-10)Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-451-47182-6
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2016
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