Pirate Boy

There’s a fair amount of WHHHHOOOOSSSHH!, POW!, WOOAAHHH!!, CLANG and BOINK, to say nothing of a parrot called Shutup in this picturebook adventure, in which a captive young pirate boy tries to evade his masters, Boss and Sidekick. There’s also energy, wit and inventive skill in the illustrations, which come in double page spreads, cartoon boxes, circles and starbursts. The first endpaper offers a cut-away model of The Barbary Buccaneer with its Music Room, Captain’s Luxury Quarters and a chained skeleton in the hold. The final endpaper provides a world map which children will enjoy exploring since it seems to promise all kinds of exciting stories. But in the end that’s what’s missing – the endpapers do not bear much relation to what happens within the book, and for all its noisy vigour the story itself is, well, okay. Good for a couple of visits, maybe, but not quite worthy of the illustrations.