Cornelia Funke
Illustrated by Kerstin Meyer
K-Gr. 2. With this tale of a bonny lass kidnapped by pirates who live to regret their choice of victim, Funke and Meyer deliver a booster shot of the girl power they celebrated in The Princess Knight (2004). Afloat in a dinghy with a flowered sail and clad in sensible shorts and a T-shirt, redheaded Molly is snatched and held for ransom by Captain Firebeard, an infamous buccaneer who causes "the knees of honest seafaring folk [to] shake like jelly." But Molly remains unfazed, for she knows something Firebeard does not: her mom is Barbarous Bertha, queen of a crew of fierce maidens and matrons. The tale comes to an oddly abrupt conclusion, and the premise of a little girl alone on a ship of rum-guzzling male delinquents may cause some children and parents to wince. But Meyer's whimsical, color-soaked line-and-watercolor illustrations ensure that the captors appear more as burly dimwits than genuine threats, and the premise of a defiant kid duping a nasty adult through personal cleverness and parental heroism has universal appeal.
