Superhero School 4 – Thunderbot’s Day of Doom

Thunderbot's Day of Doom by Alan MacDonald is a superhero comedy for 7 year olds about a school science prize that should never have been handed out.

What happens

Stan Button goes to Mighty High, which trains young superheroes. His own power is that his ears tingle when danger is about, which is handy but isn't exactly flying.

It's science prize week. Stan has invented spectacles with tiny windscreen wipers, for anyone who wears glasses and gets caught in the rain while airborne. Two speeds, fast and superfast. His friend Miles has made gloves so magnetic they whip the buckle off a man's belt from across a stage.

Minnie has made a dog lead. Tabitha Spinks has an exploding pencil that doesn't.

And Norris Trimble, the weediest boy in the school and a proper genius, has built a robot called Albot and won't say what it does.

What it does is change the weather. Not predict. Change. He asks it for the forecast at 2.35 and at 2.35 a thunderclap and a downpour arrive on a brilliant blue afternoon.

Watching all this from the stage is Dennis Trigg, a retired television weatherman the head teacher invited because she thought the children would be thrilled. They had fallen asleep during his clip.

Trigg is the one who works out what that robot is really worth.

The comedy is the good sort of daft. Short chapters, a joke on nearly every page, and lists of superhero kit your reader will read out to you whether you'd like them to or not. Smokescreen chewing gum. Hover boots. An inflatable suit for instant muscles.

One scene is worth a heads-up. After the prize-giving, Trigg pulls Norris into an empty science lab, shuts the door, shoves him into a chair and shines a desk lamp in his eyes. It's played as pantomime villainy rather than anything real, but a grown man cornering a child is a different sort of scare from a robot, and some readers will feel it.

It also helps to know Stan and his friends have had an adventure before this one. Nothing here leans on it, but you do meet them mid-friendship.

What to read next

If they'd rather have the beginning, The Revenge of the Green Meanie has Stan at home in a mask being told his dinner is getting cold, until a long silver envelope with no stamp on it lands on the mat.