THE UNLIKELY ADVENTURES OF MABEL JONES

Bloodthirsty pirates abduct their latest crew member only to find to their horror that it’s…a girl!

Adventure on the high seas comes to a young girl in the dead of night. Kidnapped after performing the “Deed” (picking her nose and eating it) that binds its performer to the nefarious Capt. Idyrss Ebeneezer Split, Mabel Jones is impressed into a crew of animal brigands on a quest for a missing treasure. She has already earned the distrust and hatred of a slow loris by the name of Omynus Hussh (“quiet as a peanut and sneaky as a woodlouse in a jar of raisins”), who may strike adult readers as something rather like a cuddly Gollum. If she is to return home she must aid the quest, befriend the loris, and outsmart a captain who has outrageously evil plans in mind. On display are some true laugh-out-loud moments, as with a piratical love letter calling a sweetheart “the rancid whale fat that fuels the lantern of my heart” and signed by “Brutal Laars the Dolphin Strangler.” Better still, it keeps moving at a hearty clip, keeping readers engaged throughout. A little bit of Monty Python, a touch of Capt. Jack Sparrow, and a whole bucketful of good-natured gross-out humor round out the adventure.

This high-spirited, pirate-tastic romp is for kids who like their buccaneers a little on the wild side.