Superhero School 1 – The Revenge of the Green Meanie

The Revenge of the Green Meanie is the first Superhero School book by Alan MacDonald, a daft and lovable adventure for 7 year olds about a boy with no powers whatsoever.

What happens

Stan Button is jumping on his bed saving mankind from Dr Doom when his mum calls him down for tea. He has a mask on the bedpost and a plastic Captain Courageous by his bed, and a firm plan for his future. He is going to be a superhero.

His dad, gently, wonders whether he might like a second option.

Then a silver envelope with no stamp lands on the doormat, inviting Stan to an interview at somewhere called Mighty High.

The interview is the best thing in the book. Miss Marbles has wild grey hair and a marmalade cat that keeps trying to escape, and she reads her questions off a crumpled sheet. Have you ever woken up on the roof of a tall building? Ever lifted a car? Ever melted anything with your eyes? Have you ever fallen upstairs, which she points out is much harder than falling down them.

No, says Stan, to all of it. Then she asks him to run at a wall as fast as he can and not to worry about the damage.

He is, she concludes, perfectly normal. Which at Mighty High is the one thing you can't be.

What saves him is the thing he's had all along and never thought counted. His ears prickle just before something bad happens, and on the way out a flowerpot comes off a ledge above Miss Marbles's head.

The joke that runs through the whole book is that superpowers are basically school admin. There's a motto on the wall, a cook called Mrs Sponge whose dinners Miss Marbles openly advises against, no uniform but capes compulsory, and a classroom of children who mostly look ordinary except for the enormous scowling one at the back.

It moves quickly, there's a proper villain waiting, and Stan is easy to like because he keeps not being the special one.

What to read next

If it goes down well there's a second one waiting, Thunderbot's Day of Doom, in which a television weatherman turns bad and starts holding the country to ransom with the forecast.