Captain Awesome Gets a Hole-in-One

Captain Awesome Gets a Hole-in-One by Stan Kirby is a silly superhero story for 5 year olds about the one birthday party Eugene really doesn't want to go to.

What happens

Meredith Mooney, who wears pink from her hair ribbons to her shoes, is having a party at Max Maxtone's Maxi Mini-Golf. Her mum is making her invite the whole class. Eugene spends the week hoping a comet will hit the Earth so it gets cancelled.

No comet comes.

Eugene and his friends have secret superhero identities, and to them Meredith is Little Miss Stinky Pinky, their pinkest enemy. This is the twelfth book in the series, but it stands alone.

Even buying the present turns into a battle. Some delivery men with crates block the bookshop door, so obviously they're the Blockhead Deliverymen of the wicked Mr Block-a-Door (Sally's supersonic scream sorts them out).

Then it's mini-golf. And Eugene turns out to be rather good at it.

Meredith is not. She takes seven goes at the first hole. Then she decides nobody is allowed to watch her play. Then her scores get suspiciously good, and Eugene is the only one who sees why.

Have you got a reader who gets VERY competitive over a game? They'll be right there with Eugene, outraged on every hole.

The course itself is half the fun. A windmill with four blades of doom. The Raging River of No Return. A Mount Rushmore where Abraham Lincoln crunches up your golf ball with his teeth (Charlie has lost four to him already).

There's a gentle point about cheating tucked in, and it comes from a comic book rather than a grown-up, which makes it go down much easier. Even Meredith gets a moment you might not expect.

It's set in an American school, and "Happy Birthday" gets new words written by the birthday girl herself. Meredith is very rude about her presents, and the name-calling (Lose-Gene, Eu-germ) is the usual playground kind.

What to read next

If your reader likes Eugene with a ball at his feet, Captain Awesome Soccer Star has him and Charlie signing up for the Sunnyview football league, completely sure they're going to be brilliant.