PIRATEOLOGY

Avast ye, mateys! Shake a leg and join 18th-century pirate-hunter William Lubber, Esq. on an around-the-world sail in search of “that especially Germinous female pirate Arabella Drummond.” His trip features stops at North Carolina’s Ocracoke Inlet, where Blackbeard met his doom, Caribbean pirate haven Port Royal and various remote Pacific isles just right for leaving or finding castaways, plus encounters with Chinese and Barbary pirates. The passages from Lubber’s log are interspersed with maps and flaps, dramatic scenes of fictional and historical pirates buckling swash (or in two cases, twisting in the wind), booklets, trading card–style portraits, views of ships, Jolly Rogers and nautical gear—not to mention detachable packets of letters, a two-part treasure map with coded message, lengths of lanyard for knot-making practice, a packet of glittering “gold dust” and covers embedded with both a compass and an oversized “jewel.” Landlocked young buccaneers (and fans of the other “-ology” outings) who have already hijacked John Matthews’s kindred production Pirates! (May 2006) will rush to board—and to attack the enticing associated website. (Novelty. 9-12)