After a monster of a whale named Cetus snaps Galleon Keene's whaling boat in two with his enormous teeth and bites off the whaler's leg to boot, Galleon floats to safety on a hunk of driftwood. Knowing he’ll never be fit to go a-whaling again, the lonely man carves himself a boy out of that same piece of driftwood, stains him brown, and names him Peggony-Po, after an old sea shanty. The boy learns to sail, and then sets out to catch Cetus, with the African American sailors aboard the Winstead putting money on what they call the Great Whale Bet of 1847. Cetus is no match for the wooden boy who rides atop him like a horse and gets the sailors in every port to feed the whale junk food—broken barn doors, a potbellied stove, a leather saddle, somebody's old undies—until the greedy old whale busts his gut. Brian Pinkney's glorious scratchboard illustrations of the hulking black whale and the lithe, impish sailor boy are stupendous, as is the rollicking language of this literary tall tale.

You can sing the sea shanty about Peggony-Po to the tune of "Blow the Man Down." Children nowadays can be horrified when they find out that hunting and killing whales was a big American industry, so delve into whaling history a bit. An Author's Note verifies the presence of black sailors on whaling ships, citing Patricia C. and Frederick L. McKissack's Black Hands, White Sails: The Story of African-American Whalers.

Reviewed by JF.

THEMES: ADVENTURE & ADVENTURERS. AFRICAN AMERICANS. MULTICULTURAL BOOKS. TALL TALES.