THE NIGHT PIRATES

Large pop-ups and multilayered tableaux gas up an already effervescent tale of pirate adventure from 2006.

Young Tom wakes (maybe) to see shadowy figures stealing the entire front from his house. He finds himself joining a crew of “rough, tough little girl pirates” scheming to disguise their ship and steal treasure from Capt. Patch and his grown-up buccaneers. Swinging from hammocks strung from pop-up palm trees, Patch’s scurvy crew turns out to be pushovers when the invaders—brandishing sabers and fiercely buckling swash beneath oversized pirate hats—leap from door and window with a “fearsome roar!” as the climactic spread opens. Tom and the girls then sail off in triumph to hoist both wall and weary boy back into place (more or less, as a final flap reveals). Printed in a range of sizes, the narrative’s type looks thrown into each scene at random, but the text is actually both easy to follow and artfully placed to enhance the melodrama of this rousing moonlit expedition.

Avast! No treasure is safe from these diminutive daredevils of the deep.