My Gym Teacher Is an Alien Overlord

My Gym Teacher Is an Alien Overlord by David Solomons is a superhero comedy for 9 year olds, narrated by the brother who didn't get the powers.

It opens with Luke plugging a leak in a ten-storey shark tank while a man with an octopus for a head gets ready to fire a missile. Then the octopus tells him his dinner is on the table. It's a video game, and that's Mum in the doorway.

Luke Parker is eleven. He has flat feet and knows more about comics than anyone in his school. His big brother Zack can fly. His neighbour Lara can summon squirrels and pigeons.

Luke got a pair of slip-on loafers.

He isn't bitter about this. (He is completely bitter about this.)

So he and his best friend Serge decide that what modern superheroes really need is a support team. They have a tree house, two logo designs and an acronym they cannot agree on. S.C.A.R.F. or S.P.A.T.U.L.A.

Zack says no. Very quickly.

Then Luke works out that his gym teacher is a supervillain. Her name is Susan Dunham. Sue Dunham. Pseudonym! Serge isn't convinced, which is fair enough, but Luke has a list of evidence and he's going to read all of it out.

Reading it is like listening to a boy who has been very unfairly overlooked and has had a lot of time to think about it. He tells you what happened. Then he tells you what he thinks about what happened, and the second bit is usually funnier. Plenty of the jokes are at his own expense and he doesn't seem to notice.

Serge is lovely. He's French, allergic to squirrel fur, takes the drowsy antihistamine by mistake and falls asleep halfway through Luke's big presentation. If your reader has one of those friends they do absolutely everything with, that will land.

One practical thing. This edition uses American words. Mom, pants, seventh grade, pocket money in dollars. Nothing a confident reader can't sail past, but it turns up on most pages.

It also isn't the first book about these two brothers, and it doesn't stop to fill you in. Zack's powers, an alien called Zorbon the Decider and a comic-shop owner who once kidnapped him are all mentioned as things that already happened.

Luke's missed moment is in My Brother Is a Superhero, where he goes down the rope ladder for a wee and loses his one chance at greatness.