DIRTY JOE THE PIRATE

Avast, there! A “cruel and evil” pirate who “roamed the world and seven seas in search of dirty socks” meets his match at last. Who could that be? “ ‘It’s Stinky Annie,’ someone said, ‘and her band of smelly varmints. / She captures every boat she can and takes their undergarments.’ ” A brisk battle ensues, but once they notice that their female adversaries are fighting barefoot, Dirty Joe’s men lose heart, and then briefs. Joe and Stinky Annie look like woolly redheaded twins in Davis’s uproarious nautical scenes, and no wonder, as they turn out to be long-separated sibs. Annie shows no mercy, though, and off Joe must go to his home near the Bay of Fundy—“He’s not a pirate any more, because he has no undies.” Singer/storyteller Harley (who has recorded a version of this) caps his tale with the sage observation that “If you’ve got an older sister, then I feel bad for you, / ‘Cause just as long as she’s alive, she’ll tell you what to do.” Clever rhyming, plus illustrations filled with colorfully clad pirates and soiled laundry hoist the audience appeal here to the tiptop of the mast. (Picture book. 5-9)