When You’re a Pirate Dog and Other Pirate Poems

This well-executed collection of swashbuckling verse features a broad cast that includes a lonely sea serpent (“It could be my manners they find unappealing./ It could be the way that I greet them./ It could be my temper, but I’ve got a feeling/ It’s mostly the fact that I eat them”); the ghost of pirate Red Eye Jack (“We’ll pilfer, swindle, lie, and curse,/ When things get bad, we’ll make them worse”), and a pirate who has been transformed into a walrus by a witch. Harris’s detailed and sea creature–studded illustrations have a touch of Steven Kellogg and Mercer Mayer, while Ode’s poems read like rambunctious tall tales. Ages 4–7. (Mar.)