Captain Underpants and the Tyrannical Retaliation of the Turbo Toilet 2000

Dav Pilkey's Captain Underpants and the Tyrannical Retaliation of the Turbo Toilet 2000 is a gloriously silly superhero romp for 7 year olds, starring a giant toilet with a grudge.

What happens

This one sits well into the series. It picks up the moment George and Harold arrive home from their last adventure, so it helps if your reader already knows the two boys, their grumpy head teacher Mr Krupp and his secret superhero self.

Somewhere out on Uranus, the Turbo Toilet 2000 wakes up. He wants revenge, and he builds a rocket scooter to go and get it.

Then George and Harold get themselves into a much more ordinary sort of trouble. They fall asleep in their tree house and sleep straight through test day. Mr Krupp is delighted. Their grades are in, Harold has failed, and next year the best friends will be in different classes.

So they borrow the time-travelling Robo-Squid suit that belongs to Melvin Sneedly (the class genius and tattletale) and go back a day to sit the tests. What could go wrong? Quite a lot. There are now two Georges and two Harolds.

It's completely daft from start to finish, and that's the point. The narrator talks straight to your reader, admits the plot is confusing and makes jokes at the book's own expense. There are Flip-E-Rama pages where you flick back and forth to make the fight scenes move. There's a comic by George and Harold themselves. And there's a chapter so "violent" it gets handed to a guest artist aged four and his nana, who's horrified.

A couple of things to flag. The toilet humour never lets up (the villain is a giant toilet, and two boys wee into empty bottles). When the teachers decide they must be dreaming, several of them strip down to their underwear. Mr Krupp is also sent to a place the book calls the "goof house", with a straitjacket and a lot of jokes about patients. Some parents won't mind at all. Others might want a quick chat about it.

If your reader loves a proper belly laugh and doesn't mind a bit of rudeness, this is pure fun.

What to read next

For more boys who make their own superhero comics, try It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's Toiletman! George Brown's friend Chris is racing to draw a whole Toiletman comic for the local comic shop, and George has a magical super burp he can't keep in.