DC Super Hero Girls – Harley Quinn at Super Hero High

Lisa Yee's Harley Quinn at Super Hero High is a superhero school story for 9 year olds about chasing an audience and what it costs.

What happens

Harley runs a web channel. She films everything, she interrupts everyone, and she lands a triple backflip while holding the camera.

At a party for the school's Super Hero of the Month, she vanishes. Her camera is found on the floor with her voice on it, yelling for help, and then the screen goes black.

The whole school scrambles. Supergirl flies. The Flash runs. Somebody goes to fetch the headteacher.

Harley is on top of the tower, filming their reactions, delighted. It's a new segment. She'd planted cameras all over the campus beforehand.

She really cannot see what she's done wrong. At lunch nobody will look at her and she keeps asking what the problem is, and it takes her friend Katana to spell it out. People are cross because they thought you were in danger. That isn't funny.

What's good here is that the book doesn't let her off and doesn't turn on her either. She gets two weeks of detention and no new videos, and she spends all of it planning her next thing, which is bigger.

The next thing is a live dance competition. Open to heroes, villains and anybody else, so a coachload of pensioners who used to be superhero sidekicks tap-dance outside on a floor that has to be built at super-speed. Reformed villains samba. Somebody's break-dancing act involves smashing plates into the audience.

The best bit isn't any of the big acts. It's the PE lesson where the coach makes them all learn the polka, and Miss Martian, who turns invisible when she's embarrassed, sits it out because there's an odd number. Then the school janitor starts dancing on his own, eyes shut, and she appears beside him.

Underneath the noise there's a real question and your reader will spot it. Harley's numbers go up and up. The message board fills with love and with people saying the votes were rigged. And then she remembers she never appointed any judges for the final, so it's just her, and she has no idea what to do.

If you've got a child who films things, narrates things and provides a running commentary on the family, they will recognise Harley entirely.

Nothing here needs a warning. There's cartoon peril, a coach who sets a climbing rope on fire in class, and that is about the size of it.

What to read next

If your reader wants more of this school, Katana's own book comes first and is a different sort of story. Quieter, a hundred ancient swords to guard, and a family history to work out.