THE BUCCANEERING BOOK OF PIRATES

Avast! Hidden treasure—of a sort—awaits discovery by budding corsairs and cutthroat knaves who delve into this slender collection of pirate tales.

Fastened to the right, me hearties, be a booklet with six superficial, sanitized retellings of public-domain yarns by the (unattributed) likes of Robert Louis Stevenson (Treasure Island) and Daniel Defoe (The Life, Adventures and Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton, here rendered as “The Captain’s Secret”). All these renditions are much improved by Robertson’s painted images of glaring buccaneers in colorful period dress and settings. On the left lurks a pirate in a box. Aye, unfolding to a height of slightly over 4 feet and printed on heavy card stock with grommets for hanging up is a piratical figure in full pop-out regalia. He brandishes a minisaber and poses with a dagger, a treasure map, a “black spot” (see Stevenson, above) and other items removable or otherwise keyed to the tales placed to the side or secreted in various pockets.

A swashbuckling bit of storytime or bedroom décor, though not even Davy Jones would want the perfunctory plot summaries and recast scenes in the accompanying literary afterthought.