Starred Review for Kirkus Reviews

In a watery anatomy lesson, a pirate skeleton gathers up and reconnects its scattered bones.As it goes, Norman's rollicking rhymes cleverly incorporate each major bone's common and formal names: "Collar me a collarbone, / the way-down-where-I-swaller bone, / a handy parrot-hauler bone— / I claim my clavicle." She tracks her skeletal buccaneer's sandy-bottom reassembly from skull to "fair phalanges." Sandwiched between visual keys on the endpapers (in separate pieces in the front and assembled and accoutered in the rear), Kolar scatters simplified but recognizable body parts (plus the requisite peg leg) across sea beds well-populated with colorful tropical fish and other marine denizens. Several of these pitch in to help before the narrative leaves the finished skeleton posing heroically atop a sunken ship with a spyglass clutched in its metacarpals: "There's treasure to be found here— / I feel it in my bones!" Budding biologists as well as general fans of pirates, poetry, and wordplay will agree—and it makes a fuller (and less freighted) alternative to Bob Barner's Dem Bones (1996) and other versions of the old teaching spiritual.Both macabre and cheery—a rare treat. (Picture book. 6-8)

ALA Booklist (Mon Apr 01 00:00:00 CDT 2019)

Disaster! A passing storm scatters a pirate skeleton's bones across the ocean, and he must begin the arduous task of hunting them down. At first, he's just a skull rolling across the ocean floor, bemoaning his situation and begging each passing fish for help: "Now I need my gnaw bone / my chicken-chomping saw bone. / I'll starve without my jawbone / I miss my mandible!" Piece by piece (and skeletal vocab word by word) he rebuilds himself with the aid of marine wildlife (though some of the aquatic critters are more helpful than others). But once his body, peg-leg and all, is rebuilt, our hero has one thing left to find. This clever, cumulative tale is enhanced by its endpapers, which feature scattered labelled bones at the front and a full skeleton at the back, and playful, dimly lit underwater digital illustrations populated by bug-eyed, curious fish. The rhyme keeps things moving despite the hefty vocabulary (Metacarpals! Phalanges!) and the illustrations make it clear what everything is. Somehow daffy and scholarly at once.

Kirkus Reviews (Fri Oct 04 00:00:00 CDT 2024)

In a watery anatomy lesson, a pirate skeleton gathers up and reconnects its scattered bones.As it goes, Norman's rollicking rhymes cleverly incorporate each major bone's common and formal names: "Collar me a collarbone, / the way-down-where-I-swaller bone, / a handy parrot-hauler bone— / I claim my clavicle." She tracks her skeletal buccaneer's sandy-bottom reassembly from skull to "fair phalanges." Sandwiched between visual keys on the endpapers (in separate pieces in the front and assembled and accoutered in the rear), Kolar scatters simplified but recognizable body parts (plus the requisite peg leg) across sea beds well-populated with colorful tropical fish and other marine denizens. Several of these pitch in to help before the narrative leaves the finished skeleton posing heroically atop a sunken ship with a spyglass clutched in its metacarpals: "There's treasure to be found here— / I feel it in my bones!" Budding biologists as well as general fans of pirates, poetry, and wordplay will agree—and it makes a fuller (and less freighted) alternative to Bob Barner's Dem Bones (1996) and other versions of the old teaching spiritual.Both macabre and cheery—a rare treat. (Picture book. 6-8)

School Library Journal (Sun Sep 01 00:00:00 CDT 2019)

PreS-Gr 2 -At the bottom of the ocean, a pirate's skeleton has become scattered. Piece by piece, it is retrieved from its marine home and reassembled. While doing so, it sings a little shanty describing major bones from the scapula to the mandible. These are not sterile, dictionary descriptions, rather they are quite playful, such as describing a skull as "the pirate's flag-of-dread bone." Norman's jaunty scheme reuses an ending word in the first three lines, before breaking off in the final line with a different one and some alliteration. It is a structure that places stress on the actual term in a memorable way. Even the digital illustrations keep the focus on the topical character through the color choices. The depths are a darker blue, and nothing else has that exact shade of white or gray. VERDICT For preschool and kindergarten students curious about the inner workings of the human body, this is an engaging seasonal introduction to one aspect of it.-Rachel Forbes, Oakville Public Library, Ont.