Captain Underpants!

I read the first Captain Underpants novel yesterday. I didn't want to do anything else until I finished it, and then all I wanted to do was read another Captain Underpants novel. I read so much young adult and children's fiction, but somehow missed out on Captain Underpants; I've paged through a couple, but never got into them. My sixth grade students last year loved them, but the principal refused to allow them into classrooms*--that should've been enough for me to read the series. So when I saw the first one in a sixth grade classroom I picked it up. Now it is on my highly recommended list--for everyone, indiscriminately, but I suppose especially for readers who appreciate humor, comics, superheroes, flip books, and/or precocious fourth-graders who figure out how to get one over on the evil principal AND save the world [maybe the true reason Ms. C. didn't allow them in the classrooms!].

Our heroes, George and Harold, like to hang out in their treehouse and make comic books. Then--and this part made me joyous, as all current and former zinesters will understand--they sneak into the school office and photocopy their Captain Underpants comics, then sell their forbidden comics to their peers on the playground for fifty cents each. George thought up Captain Underpants: "'Most superheroes look like they're flying around in their underwear. . . . Well, this guy actually is flying around in his underwear!'" He is "faster than a speeding waistband... more powerful than boxer shorts... and able to leap tall buildings without getting a wedgie." He fights for "truth, justice, and all that is pre-shrunk and cottony."

The evil principal, Mr. Krupp, hates children, and especially hates George and Harold: "He hated their pranks and their wisecracks. He hated their silly attitudes and their constant giggling. And he especially hated those awful Captain Underpants comic books." Plots ensue, on both sides, and it is more marvelous than can be imagined--marvelous enough, clearly, to spark a series. I don't want to spoil anything--let's just say that the real action starts when Harold and George send away for a 3-D hypno ring, and it gets better from there. At one point George says, "'You know, up until now this story was almost believable!'"



* My previous school stocked the classroom libraries with a lot of great literature that didn't get read but supposedly impressed people from the region with how accelerated our scholar's program was. I sneaked good books to the kids, and developed a fabulous censorship unit. Anyway, we all know that turning something into an illicit activity might be the best way to encourage it, especially among early adolescents--I wish that had been my principal's thinking, though I probably still would have been annoyed with it.