School Library JournalGr 2–5—From the smiling, rollicking kids on the cover laying claim to a beach full of treasure to the shipload of fierce, sneering, plundering, cutlass-waving, face-making buccaneers, boastful of their scurrilous behavior, these pirates are a motley group. In 19 poems, they teach "Pirate Patter" and punishment and describe some less-than-appetizing meals at sea; their penchant for stealing, burying, and sometimes losing track of treasure; and their weapons. To hear them tell it, they're "...rude, crude dudes with attitudes" who practice growling-"Arrr!"-and "…love to try to make you cry." "A pirate's life is not for me!" says the young bloke rowing away from the ship under a starry sky. The up- and downsides of life on a pirate ship are evident in Neubecker's bold, colorful, detail-filled cartoonlike illustrations, outlined in India ink.
