“Now I need my gnaw bone, / my chicken-chomping saw bone. / I’ll starve without my jawbone. / I miss my mandible!” Clever quatrains in the dismembered voice of a pirate skeleton describe its search for its bones at the bottom of the ocean. The improbable premise is delivered in a sprightly tongue- in-cheek tone that belies how much information is packed into each of the verses, which always end with the scientific name of the bone(s) being sought. From skull to phalanges, it’s a story guaranteed to tickle the funny bone (er … humerus). Digital illustrations show a stylized, blue-green underwater world with colorful sea creatures and bone-white … bones. (Ages 5–8)

A silly pirate skeleton seeks to put its bones back together in this rhyming romp beneath the waves.
Cast a spyglass ’round here
while breakers curl and pound here.
There’s treasure to be found here —
I feel it in my bones!

A stormy night at sea has uncovered some long-buried secrets and surprises. Is that the mast of a shipwreck? A faded pirate hat? And what’s that hiding in the sand? A mandible and a clavicle, phalanges and femurs, a tibia and a fibula — could there be a set of bones scattered across the ocean floor? And who might they belong to? A jaunty rhyme takes readers on an underwater scavenger hunt as a comical skeleton tries to put itself back together piece by piece. Make no bones about it: this rollicking read-aloud will have young ones learning anatomy without even realizing it.