DC Super Hero Girls – Supergirl at Super Hero High

Lisa Yee's Supergirl at Super Hero High is a warm, clumsy, funny superhero story for 9 year olds about a girl whose powers are growing much faster than she can handle.

What happens

Kara Zor-El arrives on Earth alone. She's taken in by Aunt Martha and Uncle Jonathan on their farm in Smallville, and the superpowers start arriving almost straight away.

They don't arrive tidily. Eggs crack when she picks them up. She accidentally throws a cow into the sky (she does catch it). Her first go at heat vision turns a cornfield into popcorn that rains down on the drive-in cinema!

So she's packed off to Super Hero High to learn some control. She'd secretly rather go to Korugar Academy, where the brochure promises no tests and no grades. And then it talks to her.

She crash-lands into the school's tower on day one, trips over her own laces in assembly and flattens half the teachers. Her solution is to tell everyone they can call her Super Klutz, and it's hard not to love her for it.

Her hero is Wonder Woman, who's given the job of showing her round. Supergirl is SO excited about this. Who wouldn't be, meeting the person whose videos you've watched over and over?

The best bit is about her costume. A teacher decides it needs improving and turns it into an extra-credit project for the whole class. Supergirl just wants to keep it, and when she finally explains why, half the room is in tears (the teacher most of all).

Worth knowing before you hand it over

The very first pages are sad. Kara is making a birthday card for her mum when the alarms go off, her parents put her in a spaceship, and she watches her whole planet explode through the window as she leaves. Her mum and dad are lost with it.

Later, cheerful by day, she has nightmares at night about Krypton and dreams about her parents. None of it is graphic, but if you've got a child who's lost a parent or finds that idea very upsetting, it's worth reading those opening pages together first.

For lots of readers, though, that sadness is what makes her worth rooting for. She's bouncy and kind and trying very hard, and underneath it she's homesick for somewhere that isn't there any more.

What to read next

If your reader would like to start where the school story begins, Wonder Woman at Super Hero High is the first book, with Wonder Woman as the new girl who doesn't know what a handshake is for.