Good Pirate

by Kari-Lynn Winters

Illustrated by Dean Griffiths

Pajama Press

978-1-927485-80-4

32 pp.

Ages 5-8

May 2016

Kari-Lynn Winters and Dean Griffiths’ Bad Pirate (Pajama Press, 2015), winner of the 2016 Rainforest of Reading Award, is back and Augusta Garrick is still trying to fit in with the pirates of her father’s crew.  In Bad Pirate, she had difficulties emulating the sauciness, boldness and selfishness of the sea dogs her father, Captain Barnacle Garrick, revered, and now it seems she’s just too fancy!

From Good Pirate by Kari-Lynn Winters, 

illus. by Dean Griffiths

As much as she appreciates tidiness, cleaniness and fancy baubles, she’s considered a liability when the pirates go off on a raid.  But when the crew is caught by Captain Fishmonger and his feline Tuna Lubbers, it’s the finely-scented Augusta who saves the day and proves that she’s as rotten, sneaky and brainy as necessary to be a Good Pirate.

The text is saucy and spicy and flavoured with pirate-speak, as befits a hearty swashbuckling yarn, but it’s all in good fun and brimming with joviality.  Still amidst all that merriment, so much like Kari-Lynn Winters herself, is an important message about being true to oneself and appreciating differences as strengths.  And, again, Dean Griffiths illustrates with richly detailed pirate ship sets and characters which are dogs and cats of all variety.  Kids will delight in identifying the different breeds and who’s wearing what and trying out the “pirate talk” and “nautical talk” which peppers the story and is defined in the endpapers.  Arr, Good Pirate is a good time with a hearty–both deep and enthusiastic–message packaged in the fanciest scurvyiest of art.

From Good Pirate by Kari-Lynn Winters, 

illus. by Dean Griffiths