Pirate Girl

Captain Firebeard, helmsman Morgan O'Meany and the crew of the Horrible Haddock make "the knees of honest seafaring folk... shake like jelly." But they meet their match in Molly, a small but sturdy girl whose thick auburn ponytails rival the Captain's bushy beard. Like a Little Red Riding Hood of the high seas, Molly is sailing a skiff to her grandmother's house when she is snared "like a herring" and tossed aboard the Haddock for ransom. "If I told you my mother's name,... you'd cry like a baby!" Molly snarls, to the pirates' hearty but short-lived amusement. Funke and Meyer, whose The Princess Knight sets a precedent for this feisty heroine, do not expect Molly to defeat her kidnappers single-handed. Instead, Molly sends messages in empty rum bottles until her mother, the operatically outsize Barbarous Bertha, arrives with an imposing and equally scurvy lot of pirate women. Against the changeable turquoise-to-blue-gray sea and white sky, the blazing-orange hair of Molly, Firebeard and Bertha makes them centers of attention, and readers will notice a black cat becoming Molly's silent ally. Funke and Meyer convey the pirates' surly toughness while hinting at a fierce mother-daughter bond. Ages 3-5. (June)