Shiver me timbers! Evan Solomon, wunderkind co-founder of the now-defunct Shift magazine, hip television host, journalist, and novelist, is now also a children’s writer. Bigbeard’s Hook is the first in a picture book series called Nathaniel McDaniel and the Magic Attic, about a curious young boy who encounters adventure as he explores his Gramps’s attic. In this first tale, Nathaniel checks out a pirate’s hook and finds himself transported aboard the ship of the fearsome buccaneer Bigbeard. Our hero nearly comes to a dreadful end but survives to go on to future escapades. (We’re promised a sabre-toothed tiger next.)

The book doesn’t dish up anything new or unique, but it is a lot of fun. The action-packed story moves along at a nice pace, and mischievous, curious Nate is hard to resist. Pirate speech and rhyming text make for a lively read-aloud, although it might take a couple of runs through to get the right rhythm going – a few spots read awkwardly at first.

But it’s the boisterous illustrations by Bill Slavin (Drumheller Dinosaur Dance, The Big Book of Canada) that really pull the whole book together. Busy but not messy, the drawings are a great match for the text. Colour is used judiciously to draw attention to action: vibrantly hued characters move up and down against plenty of white space, while full-colour two-page spreads chock-a-block with details mark transitions from one scene to the next. Nathaniel McDaniel’s restless energy is captured in a series of sketches that show him peeking and poking around his grandfather’s attic, and caricature-like pirates are amusing but still suitably menacing. This will be an entertaining addition to storytime.