K-Gr 2-Another clever addition on a popular topic. A "stubbly" chinned father claims to spend his days not at the office, but rather taming sea monsters, putting on pirate shows for cruise ships, and talking to his parakeet named Petey (in his heart, Petey is a parrot). This gentle, oversize man tells his skeptical son stories of his life at sea and how he rescued the boy's princess mother, who became a pirate after she'd "conquered all her kingdom's dragons." The illustrations are colorful and detailed. Surprises pop up in the painterly pictures, such as a treasure chest on a sea monster's tail and an electric toothbrush on an island. Children will enjoy examining the artwork to catch the little details.-Carrie Rogers-Whitehead, Kearns Library, UT (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Scoffing delightedly, a lad eagerly listens to his father's admission that, instead of going to an office every day, he heads down to the harbor to captain the pirate ship Lolly Golly through seas rough and smooth. "But, Papa," he protests, "you don't have a pirate beard...And besides, you don't have a wooden leg." "A wooden leg is a nuisance," Papa parries. "Only pirates on TV have wooden legs." Featuring unusually expressive figures, Grossman-Hensel's canvas-textured cartoons add amusing detail to Papa's nautical yarns, highlighted by a scene in which he meets Mama, who is also a piratestranded on a tropical island and "in a mighty bad mood." Reminiscent of Linda Heller's Castle on Hester Street (reissued in 2007, with new illustrations by Boris Kulikov) for its flights of fancy and happily intimate intergenerational give and take, this should be a popular choice for parent-child sharing. Young audiences will definitely respond to the author's closing suggestion that their own papas may be seafarers too. (Picture book. 5-8) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Papa reveals he's not really at the office all day: he's actually a pirate. He creatively addresses his son's skepticism ("'...you don't have a wooden leg.' 'A wooden leg is a nuisance'"), the story becoming wilder and wilder as it goes. Playful illustrations capture the humor of the larger-than-life dad and his wee son, not to mention the milk-drinking, stubbly-chinned pirates. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.