My Arch Enemy Is a Brain in a Jar

David Solomons's My Arch Enemy Is a Brain in a Jar is book four of Luke Parker's superhero adventures, a very funny story for 9 year olds about two brothers stuck in the wrong bodies.

What happens

On the way home from a parallel Earth, something went wrong. Luke, who is eleven and knows everything there is to know about comics, is now inside his fourteen-year-old brother Zack. And Zack is the superhero Star Lad.

So Luke has superpowers at last! Flying, telekinesis, the lot. The only problem is he can't get any of them to work. The best he's managed is shifting a pair of pants on the washing line (Luke suspects the wind did it).

Meanwhile Zack is stuck with Luke's wonky feet, light-up trainers and superhero underwear. He has exams coming, so he's planning a maths revision timetable for Luke in case they don't swap back in time. Luke is horrified.

Then the family wins a free holiday at a brain-themed leisure park called Great Minds. So does half of Luke's class. It isn't quite what the brochure promised (the shiny future city turns out to be a giant billboard) and there's no phone signal at all. Luke smells a supervillain. With a title like this one, you can probably guess what's waiting there.

This series is SO good at jokes. Luke's voice is cheeky and sharp and a little bit full of himself. His friend Lara keeps getting long words wrong, Serge is very French and very keen on the doughnut carts, and Dad can't get through a car journey without a Star Wars line.

Underneath the silliness there's something sweet. Luke has always wanted to be Zack. Now he is, and it isn't quite what he expected. Who hasn't wondered what it would be like to be their big brother or sister for a day?

What to read next

It works best if your reader already knows the gang, because the book doesn't stop to explain who's who. If they're new to it, start with My Brother Is a Superhero, where Luke nips down the tree house ladder for a wee and misses the exact moment the powers get handed out.