The Great Cheese Robbery

April 1, 2018

Gr 1-4-High on a shelf in an old junk shop sits a dusty bottle with a small ship inside. When the shop closes for the night, the ship's tiny pirate crew comes out to find adventure. The ship's boy, Button, wakes to find their cat Jones has been taken by an angry gang of mice who live in the shop's baseboard. The crew must travel far and wide to the icy land of Fridge to gather enough cheese to pay their ransom. Along the way, Button and his friends encounter the shopkeeper and his slobbery dog; endure endless tall tales from their crewmate, Old Uncle Noggin; and fill themselves nearly to the brim from a new bag of groceries. Working together, they find ways to navigate through their giant-size environment and outsmart the mice to retrieve their cat. The book's rough, sketch-style illustrations shed light on the smallness of the pirates while capturing some of their most exciting and humorous exploits. While the story does have moments of adventure, the pace can be slow and the plot often lacks the clarity, consistency, and explanation that is necessary for comprehension. The characters are somewhat flat and the time line and layout of the junk shop are foggy at best. VERDICT With so many other successful adventure stories available, this one is an additional purchase.-Erica Deb, Matawan Aberdeen Public Library, NJ

Copyright 2018 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2018
Grades 2-4 The Pocket Pirates series opens with a strangely domestic sort of adventure, but there are limitations when your pirate ship rests in a bottle on the fireplace mantel of Mr. Tooey's junk shop. When fiendish mice kidnap the pirates' tiny cat and demand cheese as ransom, the four miniature pirates spring into action. Armed with safety pins and cocktail sticks, they break into the refrigerator. Next, inspired by the Trojan horse, Button (the ship's boy) and Lily (the youngest pirate) hide inside a hollowed-out chunk of cheese, rescue their cat from the mice's den, and escape to the ship. Moving along at a good pace, the text includes plenty of comic bits as well as inventive details based on how the tiny characters manage in their full-scale environment, where even a spider becomes a menacing threat. It's the artwork, though, that brings the story to life through deft, quirky ink drawings of the characters in action. The writer-illustrator of the Something Wickedly Weird books, Mould now offers an appealing adventure series for younger chapter-book readers.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)

January 1, 2019
A crew of ship-in-a-bottle pirates lives in an old junk shop and comes out to explore when the shop is closed. In Cheese, the Pocket Pirates' cat is kidnapped and ransomed by a band of baseboard mice. In Drain, they plan an escape when their route to the kitchen is blocked. Swashbuckling adventure meets the miniaturized whimsy of The Borrowers in these British chapter books illustrated with pen-and-ink drawings.

(Copyright 2019 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)