The Jolly Regina (The Unintentional Adventures of the Bland Sisters Book 1)

October 17, 2016
Kale and Jaundice Bland, twin sisters who live in the town of Dullsville, are quite content with their lives darning socks, eating plain oatmeal, and reading the dictionary for fun. They aren’t even concerned about their parents, who left to run an errand several years earlier and never returned. After the girls are kidnapped by Deadeye Delilah, captain of a band of all-female pirates, they are thrust into an adventure that involves their missing parents, questionable stews, and Deadeye Delilah’s nemesis, Captain Ann Tennille. Deadpan dialogue helps the sisters live up to their surname (“I hope they have some salve on hand, wherever we’re going,” notes Kale, as the girls are hauled off in a chafe-inducing burlap sack), but there’s no shortage of the kind of “Serious, Life-Threatening Peril” that the twins typically avoid. Filled with puns, intrigue, and ample evidence that women make excellent—and ruthless—pirates, it’s a promising introduction to the Unintentional Adventures of the Bland Sisters series. Final art not seen by PW. Ages 8–12. Author’s agent: Barry Goldblatt, Barry Goldblatt Literary. Illustrator’s agent: Anne Moore Armstrong, Bright Agency.

October 15, 2016
When two dull-as-dishwater sisters suddenly find themselves working for female pirates, their days of boredom come sadly to an end. Jaundice and Kale Bland haven't seen their parents in years, but that's OK. They've kept to themselves and have a lucrative business darning socks. Life is boring, and that's fine with them. That is, until a pirate named Deadeye Delilah kidnaps the two and forces them into working for her all-women crew on the high seas. Delilah's in search of a particular cache of treasure, and she's convinced the girls hold the secret to its recovery. Together the two must use their limited skills to escape certain death and find out what happened to their parents so long ago. There's a smidgen of Snicket in the works here, but only a pinch. Generally LaReau serves her humor dry, adding some serious swashbuckling for good measure. Sailing right over children's heads will be jokes like the search for Capt. Ann Tennille, the all-male rival pirate ship the Testostero, or the tattooed pirate Princess Kwee-Kweg. Meanwhile Hill's pen-and-ink cartoons give the book precisely the right strange and silly tone to help sustain what easily could have become a one-joke wonder. She gives Jaundice and Kale slightly darker skin than Deadeye Delilah, whose crew is a multiethnic one. "To shanghai" and "charming" don't usually go together, but here they do. (Adventure. 7-9)

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November 15, 2016
Grades 5-8 In a yarn that sails right along the slippery edge of good taste, routine-loving sisters Kale and Jaundice Bland are kidnappedat the behest, it turns out, of their long-missing, adventure-junkie parentsby a band of female pirates searching for the fabled treasure of Captain Ann Tennille ( Why, Cap'n Ann had the biggest booty ye ever laid eyes on! ). Following a sea battle with the rival ship Testostero, which is capped by the pantsing of its (male) captain, the sisters help the rotund ship's cook, Fatima, quash mean girl fat-shamers with a chantey. After a brief spell as castaways on remote Gilly Guns Island (get it?), they vow to return to their home in Dullsville and never leave. As this is the first of a series, that hope is plainly in vain. Replete with puns, gags, and life lessons, this transgressive voyage may ketch fans of envelope pushers like Barry Yourgrau, Alan Katz, or Roald Dahl. Final versions of Hill's frequent spot illustrations not seen.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)