Spider-Man – Into the Spider-Verse

Steve Behling's Spider-Man - Into the Spider-Verse is a superhero story for 10 year olds about a Brooklyn boy who gets powers he never asked for.

What happens

Miles Morales is having a bad start to term. He has been moved to a new school he didn't choose, his old friends are all still at the old one, and his dad is a police officer who insists on dropping him off in the cruiser.

Then, because Miles won't say it back quickly enough, his dad says I love you to him over the car's loudspeaker, in front of every single student at Visions Academy.

Is there a worse way to start at a new school? That's the boy this book is about. He draws, he sticks his artwork up around the neighbourhood, he'd rather be anywhere else, and he is very funny in his own head about all of it.

Then a spider bites him.

Overnight he grows out of his trousers. His thoughts get so loud he can hardly hear over them. He touches a girl's shoulder to say hello and can't let go, and the school nurse has to cut her hair to free him. Then he sticks to a door, a shirt, a bookcase and eventually the ceiling.

It's properly funny, and that's what carries it. Miles narrates the whole thing to himself in a running panic, and the embarrassment gets as much room as the action.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

Miles is thirteen, and he says so out loud. The voice is a teenager's voice, and a lot of the comedy is about puberty and not knowing how to talk to a girl. Your reader is looking up at him a little rather than straight across at him.

There's also a death. Following the spider into an abandoned subway tunnel, Miles watches Spider-Man fight the Green Goblin over a machine that could tear a hole in reality. Spider-Man is hurt, then unmasked, then killed, and Miles is close enough to see it and can do nothing. The Goblin is crushed under machinery, and the book says plainly that it wasn't pretty.

It isn't gory and it isn't dwelt on. But it is the hinge of the story, not a passing scare, and a child who has not seen the film will not see it coming.

What to read next

For a reader who would rather laugh than grieve, hand them My Brother Is a Superhero instead. Luke knows everything there is to know about comics, misses the moment that hands out the superpowers because he needs a wee, and has to watch his extremely boring older brother get them instead.