I have a new favorite superhero. He replaces Batman, Wolverine, and even Mr. Incredible in my list of favorite supers. He wears a cape and little else, and fights the oddest assortment of supervillians imaginable, including giant toilets and beserk alien lunch ladies.
Who could it be? Only the one, the only, Captain Underpants!
Why Captain Underpants, you ask? It's very simple. The Captain Underpants series of books has ignited the spark for reading in my son. He inherited his mother's dislike of reading rather than my voracious appetite for books, and getting him to read anything was like pulling teeth. Until we found Captain Underpants, that is.
Dav Pilkey writes with an eye towards the young male reader, filling his stories with boogers, multi-tentacled aliens, bizarre science geeks, and mischevious little boys filled with a healthy distrust of authority. How could a young boy not like it? This is the first time TheBoy has eschewed television in favor of reading.
That's Happy Dance time.
That is all.
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11 comments:
I absolutely have to second your recommendation of the Captain Underpants books. My girls, both voracious readers, have enjoyed the heck out of the books not only because they're funny, but because they're well-written, to boot. The structure of the stories, plus all the hidden jokes, add up to good fun, which is what reading should feel like.
bizarre science geeks, and mischevious little boys filled with a healthy distrust of authorityHow about some stories about mischievous little boys, filled with a distrust of authority, who are bizarre science geeks?
I refer you to the Mad Scientists Club.
Captain Underpants is my hero, too. For the same reason, obviously.
Jay,
Many have accused me of having an overactive imagination, but this one takes the cake. When I read about captain underpants, I was striken with the image of you wearing nothing but "tighty whities", using a bed-sheet as a cape, and leaping from the top of a set of bunk beds, maniacally cackling all the way down.
Now where did I leave that brain bleach? [/rhetorical]
- Brad
Outstanding!
Anything that gets kids reading is aces in my book. That includes comics and manga and graphic novels.
For Silver, it was the Goosebumps books by R.L. Stine, then Harry Potter got all three of my girls hooked on reading (Yay! Now we swap books and can have discussions...talk about happy dance!).
Fantastic!
The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.
~ Mark Twain
And even better, set in my hometown!
captain underpants didn't interest my kids. jess is a voracious reader, but geoff went the route of Sideways School by louis sachar. that's what did it for him. and now he reads Brian Jacques a lot... and lots of "real stories" of heroes like "Heroes Don't Run" about WWII young men.
i'm okay by that.
See if you can find Tom Swift Jr books they were cool way back whem
I am going to collect them for my grandkids. I have this feeling that my granddaughter will be happier with them than with the nancy drew type stories.
Amen, brother. We got two boys reading with this (reading on their own, for fun, that is).
Sounds like he likes parody... perhaps give Pratchet a go?
Or something with action to go with the occasional sidesplitting joke, like oh say, John Ringo's Posleen series. (What boy would fail to like the idea of a short guy in powered super armor massacring aliens with extreme firepower... or if out of ammo, use boulders and kill them by bowling. He of course also gets a medal for being in the blast zone of and surviving a nuclear explosion after using his suit powerpack as a clamp mine on an alien spaceship).
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