Alice has worked at PopCo, one of the world’s largest toy companies, since they recruited her from her job creating crossword puzzles. Although she’s created a series of semi-successful kits for the kid spy, she has no idea why she’s been chosen to join a specialized team of PopCo employees helping create the newest “it” item for teen girls. Secluded at a team-building creative camp, she soon begins receiving coded messages. Could these cryptic notes be related to the mysterious encoded pirate treasure map that her grandfather claimed he solved? Or perhaps there’s something else going on at PopCo.

Few books come with press kits that offer twelve steps to become a counterculture revolutionary. (Number Ten: Get a bicycle and ride it to work.) Even fewer books feature phrases like “Axioms are the very foundations of mathematics. Axioms are things that you can't necessarily prove but form the basis for all mathematical proofs. Proofs, in mathematics, are logical evidence that something will always be the same way...” and are not boring.

If you are a book person with an actual math phobia, then “PopCo” is not for you.

But if you are a book person who claims to have a math phobia because it is expected of you, while secretly reveling in code-breaking, strings of prime numbers, lateral thinking puzzles, and crosswords? (Okay, maybe crosswords are generally considered the domain of the English-y among us), then read this book.

At the other end of the spectrum of “PopCo’s” heady mix of mathematics and social responsibility lies Gideon Defoe’s “The Pirates! In an Adventure with Ahab”. (Don’t forget the exclamation point.) This witty sequel to The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists features the fabulously bearded Pirate Captain and his crew as they meet Cutlass Liz, a fierce pirate who “ate twenty babies, just to show her crew how ruthless she was!”, buy a new ship on credit, sail to Vegas, and risk life and limb for one amazing Prize Ham. Oh, and of course, along the way, they meet Ahab and pursue the evil Moby Dick. These oddly lovable pirates have a habit of going off on tangents, gazing at clouds, and having an unhealthy obsession with hams.

Complementing the off-the-wall storyline are footnotes highlighting related interests, such as when the ship’s wheel first replaced the tiller (1705) and barracudas’ attraction to shiny reflective things. Defoe also tidily ties in plot points of Moby Dick to reward those who managed the book (or the Cliff Notes) in English 101.

Defoe knows how to pursue a joke, even the slightly sophomoric ones, with pitch-perfect absurdity. One highlight that isn’t even a part of the story is the five page list of all the “titles” in The Pirates! series. Like the Boxcar Children, there seem to be no limit to the adventures the Pirates undertake, from adventures “with Ponies & Riding” to “with Jennifer Garner” to “The Pirates! Are Overdoing it a Bit.” But when these pirates overdo it, it ends up in a rollicking good time.

Whether you like your pirate themes light (“PopCo”) or heavy, these books are waiting. Package them with a bottle of rum and a parrot and make an evening of it.

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