TO CAPTURE THE WIND

MacGill-Callahan (When Solomon Was King, 1995, etc.) explores the Celtic world in this story starring an ingenious Irish maiden, Oonagh, who answers a pirate king's riddles to win back her betrothed, an expert weaver named Conal. Expert agriculturalist Oonagh will wed Conal on May Day; he's happy, she's happy. Then the warriors of Malcolm, pirate king of the islands, kidnap Conal and every other person skilled with needle and loom. Oonagh, rushing to rescue Conal, comes across Ethne, a southern princess pining for the love of Malcolm's son, Aidan, whom she thinks she's lost because she failed to solve a series of riddles. Undeterred, Oonagh rows to the pirate's isle, issues her challenge, answers the riddles, and escapes with Aidan, Conal, and the pirates' kidnapped slaves by inventing sails—``a new word for a new idea.'' As the book swashbuckles to its not unforeseen ecstatic end, all loose ends are knotted up as neatly as expert-weaver Conal would have wished: There's a double wedding, and Malcolm is laughed out of countenance, becoming ``the proudest grandfather in all Ireland.'' In Manchess's first picture book, painterly oils answer the demands of this story, with fierce posturing on all sides. Oonagh's swagger and riddle-answering will appeal to young readers, even if the motives behind all the heroism isn't particularly germane to most in the picture-book set. (Picture book. 4-8)