Garth brings his Nixiness to newly confident readers for the first time in this collection of four imaginative tales. In ''Blackbread the Pirate'', a kind of Time Bandits skit, young Peter finds himself drawn down through the sewers into the Neverworld, as he tries to retrieve his DVDs, stolen by a ragtag bunch of piratical rats. In ''The Princess and the Beastly Beast'' Princess Rinda does battle with a monster that is scarier on the outside than it is on the inside, while her royal but ever-distracted parents are variously composing music and spells. In ''Serena and the Sea Serpent'', it takes super-brainy Serena to cut through the mercenary scheming of foolish adults and sort out the sea monster "problem" once and for all.