Beware the School Bus! Superhero Vs. School by Ethan Long

IN THE DARKEST NIGHT, YOU WILL FIND OUR HERO HURLING HIMSELF INTO ACTION. BUT REAL DANGER IS NEAR... THE FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL.

Despite Scotty's superpowers, our hero cannot stop time. The holidays are over. Not even a new backpack and a new shirt, freshly ironed by Mom, can ward off the mental miasma of the math worksheet, the horrors of the history book, the scourge of the science test, the stomach-churning special in the lunchroom, or the peril of the playground!

Beware! The Dreaded School Bus cometh! The dark and dangerous SCHOOL grows near!

But, WAIT! Who does he see, standing guard in front of the school?

Scotty is not alone! His five fearless friends--FIVE SUPERHEROES--equipped with crusading capes, bad-grade-blocking bracelets, and super-soaring powers--are ready to zoom into action and meet the challege of scholarship!

Scotty is feeling so empowered that he offers his new teacher an apple!

It's super school-power, in the award-winning Ethan Long's latest, Superhero vs. School (Bloomsbury, 2020), as Scotty gets by with a little help from his friends. As an illustrator, Long's style has become familiar to the picture-book crowd, and his spirited heroes have long triumphed in his humorous hits, such as Fright Club and Fangsgiving. (See reviews here.)

The Hair Makes the Man: Super Hairo and the Barber of Doom

EVERY SUPERHERO GETS HIS POWERS FROM SOMEWHERE.

MY POWER COMES FROM MY HAIR.

THE MORE MY HAIR GROWS, THE MORE AWESOME MY POWERS BECOME.

Superman may have had his kryptonite, but this young hero's superpowers come from his head.  Not from his brain, exactly, but from his hair--a truly impressive, bushy, reddish superfro that make all his feats of daring possible.  Along with his mega-hirsute followers, all sprouting massive mops, Rocco and his superfriends  accomplish feats of  strength and derring-do that impress all the kids in the neighborhood, especially that one interesting girl who quietly watches each awesome skateboard  jump or BMX bike leap.

But every superhero has his nemesis: Superman has The Joker, and young Rocco has ... The Barber of Doom.  

Faster than a speeding bullet, his traitorous parents nab Rocco, and off he goes to the villain's lair, where the Barber of Doom has his way with his hopelessly snarled mane. When Superhero emerges from his shearing a hapless hero, shorn of the source of his strength, he just knows that his super powers are history. Super Hairo is now Wimpy Baldo.

But that girl has a way to restore his powers.  An artful emergency is staged,  her Teddy bear is stranded far above the ground, and our sheared hero and his band of superdudes take the bait and answer the call to action.

POWER SURGED THROUGH US, AND WE SPRANG INTO ACTION!

It's hair today and gone tomorrow for this pint-sized superhero and his minions, who find out that their powers are all in their heads--but not in their hair, in this spoof of the Samson complex, John Rocco's Super Hair-o and the Barber of Doom (Hyperion, 2013). Masterful page design gives this superhero tale its pizzazzy prowess. Using comic-book dot-printing technique and a palette right out of DC Comics, Rocco uses dialogue balloons and plenty of  POWS and ZAPS to show the superdudes in action, switching to gray and white pages when the heroes lose their powers at the barbershop, and returning to color when the clean-cut heroes discover that even minus their manes, their mojo is still working. For a dynamic duo, a mane event, pair this story with Bethany Barton's This Monster Needs a Haircut (see review here)

A 2012 Caldecott winner for his Blackout, Rocco is a versatile author-illustrator who goes way back to Aesop for his fractured fable, Wolf! Wolf! (see review here), and ventures into fantasy in Moonpowder, very different stories but all with exemplary artwork.

The Case of the Disappeared Drawers: Charlie's Superhero Underpants by Paul Bright

ON A WILD AND WINDY DAY,
ROUND ABOUT THE END OF MAY,
A GREAT AND GUSTING GALE BLEW THE LAUNDRY CLEAN AWAY.

SOCKS AND SHIRTS, A WOOLLY HAT,
BUT FAR WORSE THAN ALL THAT
WAS YOUNG CHARLIE'S SUPERHERO UNDERPANTS.

Now, mind you, these are no prosaic underpants: Charlie has already proved their powers in many a daring deed of doughty duty. They are no tiresome whitie tighties either. They're yellow, with red trim and the word POW! on the front and KERZAP! OOF! and SPLAT! emblazoned on their backside.

What's a superhero to do without his nifty knickers?

Without his superhero underpants, Charlie's powers are impoverished, and when a preliminary search (by "boats and planes and satellites") fails, Charlie holds the requisite press conference and announces that he's off on a globetrotting geography tour to return his drawers to their proper derriere. First, it's over the English Channel by balloon, where he finds "a fine French fox" in possession of sister Sophie's socks. Other articles of family-wear are found on the Serengeti, the plateau of Peru, ("llamas in brother Ben's pajamas"), and the muddy Mississippi where a 'gator sports Gramps' woolly cap.

Finally the long trek takes him to Nepal, where he spots a giant shaggy Yeti with his nether parts jammed into Charlie's diminutive drawers, pictured humorously in Lee Wildish's breezy cartoon style in a vertical double-page spread. A trade is quickly made with the woolly hat for the special skivvies :

CHARLIE THANKED THE YETI, AND HE PULLED HIS PANTS UP TIGHT.

THEY HAD POW! ON THE FRONT SO HE HAD PUT THEM ON JUST RIGHT.

HE RAISED ONE ARM UP HIGH AND HE FLEW INTO THE SKY!

Paul Bright's newest, Charlie's Superhero Underpants (Good Books, 2010), offers zippy verse with a catchy internal rhyme scheme, and coupled with Wildish's clever cartooning, provides plenty of giggle fare for the picture book set, who are known to dote on earlier entries in the growing shelf of posterior lit. (For those who do dote on duff stuff, there is a roundup of recent rearward renderings listed in my May 22 review of Chicken Butt! here.)