This week I read The Pirate Queen, by Emily Arnold McCully.

If you recognize Ms. McCully’s name it may be because she is the prolific author/illustrator who won the Caldecott in 1993 for Mirette on High Wire.

The Pirate Queen is a wonderful mixing of the facts and the stories surrounding the legendary sea captain, Grania O’Malley.

I loved this book, which is aimed at children in the first to the third grades, for several reasons. The first being the illustrations. I immediately fell in love with the defiant girl on the cliffs with her shorn hair and her bare feet and the wind whipping her skirts around her.

But the illustrations only serve to give life to a girl who was legendary for her bravery and her willingness to do whatever it took to rule. In this book we’re told that she gave birth to her first-born son on the high seas and the next day she was up on deck fighting Turkish pirates. It also tells about the time she proposed marriage to a man who owned a castle she wanted.

And that’s what I find attractive about Grania O’Malley. She was a woman who was not afraid to do what it took to achieve the goals she set. She was brave and bold.

Unfortunately, not too much is known about her for sure. There are some court records. Some of the history of her fight with England and her meeting with Queen Elizabeth I is recorded. But most of her life is handed down in stories and how her exploits grew in the telling, we don’t know.

Still, this picture book is delightful, well researched, and tells the tale of a woman who fought alongside her men to hold for her family the estate she thought was theirs by birth.

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