Jack Plank tells tales by Natalie Babbitt

Jack Plank tells tales / Natalie Babbitt.-- New York : Scholastic, 2007.

x, 128 p. : ill. ; 21 cm.

ISBN: 978-0-545-00496-1
"Michael Di Capua Books"

1. Storytellers -- Jamaica -- Fiction. 2. Pirates -- Caribbean Area -- Fiction.

813.54

Jack Plank is an unemployed pirate who needs a new job. He’s just been downsized – to use an anachronism for a tale set in 1720. It seems Jack was never too good at plundering; he was better at staying aboard and making soup. So, when the buccaneering business took a downturn, he was let go, and set ashore near the little port of Saltwash, Jamaica.

There he takes a room at the widow DelFresco’s rooming house. For the next eight days he looks for work, but comes back every evening with a different tale of why he is unable to work as a farmer, baker, fortune-teller, fisherman, barber, goldsmith, actor, or musician. And all of his tales relate, not to a lack of the necessary skills for any of these trades, but to his experiences in his former line of work. And while his stories are all improbable or puzzling they are also very interesting. In the end, he does what many underemployed citizens of seaport towns do – he earns his living in the tourist trade. He becomes the resident storyteller, the attraction at the rooming house when Mrs. DelFresco serves tea.

Who would have thought that a pirate's stories filled with trolls, mermaids, ghosts, feral children that shriek like seagulls and men that turn into octopi could be gentle and comforting tales? But by skillfully building her stories around the humans and their affections and interactions rather than their fears Babbitt has done so. She’s also illustrated the stories with drawings that perfectly match her gentle tone.