Pirate Princess

K-Gr 2—Princess Bea is tired of things frilly and girlie, and she longs to live on the high seas as a bona fide pirate. When she stumbles upon a pirate ship on the dock, she jumps at the chance to finally do so. However, she—and the crew—quickly realize that her strengths do not lie in deck swabbing, cooking, or being the ship's lookout perched high up in the crow's nest, the latter quite graphically shown when poor Bea loses her lunch, literally, on Captain Jack. (Parents will cringe, and children will most likely laugh as they yell a collective "EWWWW!") Before he can throw her overboard in exasperation, the youngster sniffs out hidden treasure and proves her worth. Told in rhyme, the story is stilted in places, and it goes on a bit too long. However, the illustrations do an effective job of capturing its emotion and cadence. This could be a storyhour extra for a nautically themed romp through pirate-infested seas, but Emily Arnold McCully's The Pirate Queen (Putnam, 1995) and Melinda Long's How I Became a Pirate (Harcourt, 2003) are stronger choices.—Lisa Gangemi Kropp, Half Hollow Hills Public Library, Dix Hills, NY