No Pirates Allowed! Said Library Lou

June 1, 2013

K-Gr 2-Big Pirate Pete and his parrot, Igor, loudly find their way into the local library where their map indicates a buried treasure. Library Lou, the quick-witted librarian, requests that Pete shower, change clothes, and come back quietly the next day. She teaches Pete about the 25 letters besides the "X" and shows him how they work together to form words. Pete finds his treasure in books by Dr. Seuss, Mother Goose collections, and Arnold Lobel's "Frog and Toad" series. He discovers classics like Treasure Island as well as the nonfiction section. After becoming a voracious reader, he returns to the library to thank Lou for helping him discover the riches of reading. Lou hangs a sign on the library door that says, "Pirates Allowed." Detailed color cartoon illustrations of characters and settings in sharp contrast lend themselves to conversations about strong character types and reading anywhere (including on a pile of rocks surrounded by seagulls). Rhyming text and steady pacing make this book a good read-aloud for Talk Like a Pirate Day or National Library Week.-Lindsay Persohn, University of South Florida, Tampa

Copyright 2013 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 1, 2013
A librarian endows a treasure-hunting pirate with reading skills as well as training him to hush up in this bland valentine to literacy. Sending other users fleeing from their computer screens and cozy reading nooks to cower in the stacks, Big Pirate Pete bursts into the Seabreezy Library bellowing demands for treasure. Flashing the fierce, quelling glare that good public and school librarians everywhere wield, diminutive Library Lou shuts him up and sends him away with a promise to help after he bathes and changes his undershorts. When he meekly returns, she shows him that there's more to the alphabet than "X marks the spot," and in time, he becomes an avid reader--as Greene puts it in a typically lumbering couplet: "Those factual books, Big Pete came to love. / He read about things that he'd never heard of...." Ajhar tracks the development of this Common Core-friendly reading preference in comical scenes in which schoolmarmish Lou dances balletically among piles of books as the exaggeratedly humongous pirate grows more and more absorbed in his reading. At last he figures out that reading is fun and tenders his thanks: " ' 'Cause of ye, now we know--books be the treasure!' / 'Shucks, ' whispered Lou. 'It's been my pleasure.' " Worthy, even trendy, but unlikely to make nonreaders (of any age) follow the animals in Judy Sierra and Marc Brown's classic to become Wild About Books (2004). (Picture book. 6-8)

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July 1, 2013
Library Lou promises treasure to pirate Big Pete, but only if he'll behave himself and let her teach him to read; otherwise, he's banned from the premises. Through a lengthy rhyming text that maintains its meter impressively, Pete learns that books are the real treasure. Cartoonish illustrations use light and shadow well to create dimension.

(Copyright 2013 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)