"Princess Bea was not the kind of princess you'd expect..." Bea doesn't want to marry a prince; she wants to be a pirate! She runs off and joins a pirate ship, but she's terrible at swabbing the deck and cooking, and she gets seasick in the crow's nest. They're about to make her walk the plank when she smells gold, and guides the pirates to buried treasure.

See also: Princess Bess Gets Dressed; Rufus Goes to Sea ( )

Bored with her royal life, the unconventional Princess Bea signs on as a pirate on Captain Jack's ship, only to discover that her skills, from swabbing the deck to cooking the food, are somewhat lacking. Just as she is being made to walk the plank however, she smells gold, leading her pirate crew to buried treasure...

I wish that I had enjoyed Pirate Princess more than I did, as I frequently get requests at work for princess stories that challenge the conventional "girly" theme. Unfortunately, although I did think that illustrator Jill McElmurry's illustrations were cute, both the story and the text itself fell short. Author Sudipta Bardhan-Quallen's rhyming verse is frequently quite awkward, and her story-line, in which Bea makes a place for herself, not through hard work but through her gold-sensitive nose, somehow felt like an unpleasant rehash of Andersen's The Princess and the Pea. I would have preferred something a little more "girls can do" than this, if the point was to offer a princess/pirate mash-up. In any case, tastes vary, so if you're in the market for a girl pirate story, this might fill the bill, although I'd advise the prospective reader to read it through first, to see if it fills their needs. ( )

This is about a young princess who is unhappy being a princess. She wants to be a pirate. This helps students with their confidence in becoming what ever they want to. ( )

Princess Bea isn’t like other princesses, she prefers pirate ships above tea parties, the salty sea over silly dolls. But what’s a landlocked princess to do? When the captain offers Bea a place aboard his ship, it’s a dream come true—until she’s put to work swabbing the decks and making dinner for the crew. Can a princess like Bea put her royal gifts to work and make the pirates see that she’s seaworthy after all, or will they make her walk the plank?

One of the very first things that interested me the second I read this book is that the language and the way it is written is in “Pirate Language”, and with that I never got bored of this story from beginning to end. Second, thing that interested me throughout the book was the fact that the pictures presented in this story sort of made it interactive at times. Overall this book is not just interactive with the pictures, but, also, with the language it engrosses people into the story, so in turn, they never get bored of it or they may even want to read it again. ( )