PIRATERIA

One-stop shopping for all “swashbucklers and swashbucklerettes.”

Offering “[s]pinnakers, jibs, and rope in hanks; / solid maple walking planks” and arrays of specialty goods from eye patches to aRRgyle socks, this “wonderful, plunderful pirate emporium” merits a stop on every budding buccaneer’s itinerary. Accompanying a hearty commentary that breaks into and out of rhyme but keeps to a rolling rhythm, Brown dishes up illustrations featuring an array of scurvy (if somewhat yuppified) shoppers of both sexes in nautical wear. They are browsing the Yo Ho Hosiery and Footwear department, sitting down in the food court with flagons and nasty-looking viands or accosting the glowering sales staff (“Where be the yardarm cozies?”). From pirate togs to treasure maps to night classes in map reading, here’s the place to pick up anything piratical. Prices? “[W]e put the ‘arg’ in ‘bargain’!” is the proud claim of this K-Mart for corsairs.

Avast! This combination of nonsense verse and everything pirate is a guaranteed winner.