Captain Awesome Soccer Star

Stan Kirby's Captain Awesome Soccer Star is a daft superhero story for 5 year olds about a boy who joins a football team expecting to score a million goals.

What happens

Eugene McGillicudy is in second grade. He is also, secretly, Captain Awesome, defender of the town of Sunnyview against a surprising amount of eviling.

His best friend Charlie is Nacho Cheese Man, whose superpower is a can of squirty cheese. There's a hamster called Turbo who patrols in a clear plastic ball. You get the idea.

A sign-up sheet turns up at school and that's that. Eugene has never played football in his life. He is nevertheless certain he'll score a million goals a game, which will make the matches last for days.

Then the coach turns out to be his dad. And the team's best player turns out to be Meredith Mooney, who dresses entirely in pink, smells of strawberry air freshener, and calls him Stinkgene.

Practice does not go well. Eugene trips over the ball. He trips over the ball again. Then the ball hits him in the chest and he trips over it.

So he smuggles his cape into his kit bag for the first match, because he always thinks better thoughts in a cape. The referee gives him a yellow card before he's touched the ball (no capes allowed).

Who hasn't signed up for something absolutely certain they'd be brilliant at it?

What makes this work is that Eugene narrates his own disasters as heroic battles. A squirrel lobbing acorns at his head becomes General Squirrel Nuthatch and his Atomic Acorns. His baby sister's nappy becomes Queen Stinkypants firing stink clouds across the pitch. He is never once discouraged, which is very cheering to read at five.

The pages are busy with sound effects in capitals and short bursts of thought, so it's a friendly one for a child just starting chapter books alone.

One small heads-up. It's an American book, so the game is soccer all the way through and the pitch is a field. Most children take about four pages to stop noticing.

What to read next

If you've got a reader who wants more of the same daftness, Captain Awesome and the New Kid is in the library too. A moving van pulls up at the end of the road, and the Sunnyview Superhero Squad has to work out whether the new girl is friend or foe.