Captain Underpants and the Perilous Plot of Professor Poopypants

Dav Pilkey's Captain Underpants and the Perilous Plot of Professor Poopypants is a VERY silly comic-strip adventure for 7 year olds about a genius nobody can take seriously.

What happens

It's the fourth Captain Underpants book, and a little comic by George and Harold at the front catches everyone up. The boys once hypnotised their grumpy head teacher, Mr Krupp. Now a snap of the fingers turns him into a hero in his pants, and water turns him back.

Professor Pippy P. Poopypants has built a shrinking ray and a growing ray. The trouble is that nobody will listen to him. They're all too busy laughing at his name.

Meanwhile George and Harold have been banned from the pizza trip, so they booby-trap the staff room instead (sticky paste on the ceiling fan, a fridge stuffed with packing foam). The science teacher quits the next day.

Guess who takes the job, sure that children will be kinder? How do you think that goes? The whole class falls about laughing. When the boys' new comic about him goes round the playground, he finally snaps. Soon he's ten storeys tall inside an enormous robot, the school is small enough to fit in his hand and everybody on Earth has to swap their name for a silly one.

Reading it feels like a comic and a chapter book at once. The chapters are short (one is over in two words) and there's a drawing on nearly every page. HA-HA-HAs fill whole pages in giant letters, and the narrator chats away to your reader the whole time. The big fight is in Flip-E-Rama, where you swipe back and forth between two pictures to make them move. Most children will get through it in one sitting.

The name charts are printed in full too, so expect to hear everyone's new silly name at teatime!

Worth knowing before you hand it over

The boys are proper pranksters, the teachers are mean and the book's firmly on the boys' side. The jokes are mostly bottoms, potties and pants. The charts use American words for bottoms, including one that means something much ruder over here. And the old science teacher is packed off to a home with a jokey name about losing touch with reality. Plenty of parents won't mind. Others might want a quick chat.

What to read next

For another narrator who can't stop butting in, try You're a Bad Man, Mr Gum by Andy Stanton. Its grumpy villain dreams of being a giant who pulls the roofs off houses, and the town is full of wonderfully daft names.