Franny K. Stein Mad Scientist: Lunch Walks Among Us by Jim Benton

Franny K. Stein isn't your average little girl. Whereas most little girls like unicorns and playing with their dolls, Franny prefers bats and spiders and bubbling bakers and steaming test tubes. Needless to say, Franny isn't very popular with her classmates when she starts a new school. Most of her classmates fear her. All Franny wants is to fit in.

Miss Shelly, Franny's teacher, suggests that Franny study what the other kids like, kind of like an experiment, so that she can fit in a little better. Franny does her homework and ends up conforming quite well except that she abandons everything that made her Franny.

One day, a Giant Monstrous Fiend emerges from the trashcan composed of old gum, gym shoes, trash. and unstable industrial waste! The worst part is that the monster takes Miss Shelly and heads for the flagpole! Franny to the rescue! She quickly sews together all the lunchmeat from everyone's sandwiches and combines this with some leftover unstable industrial waste resulting in the creation of a Lunch-Meat Creature. The Giant Monstrous Fiend drops Miss Shelly on a stack of white bread slices that Franny assmebled for just such a situation, while the Lunch-Meat Creature pulls the flagpole from the ground and winds up to bat the Giant Monstrous Fiend into the next century! After saving the day, the kids all love Franny just the way she is and she finally feels accepted. Second graders and up will enjoy this series that features illustrations on each page.

Genre: Fantasy


Benton, J. (2003). Franny K. Stein mad scientist: Lunch walks among us. New York: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers.

The Adventures of Captain Underpants by Dav Pilkey

Best friends George and Harold create the greatest superhero of all time : Captain Underpants! The school troublemakers pull out their best pranks at the big football game and are caught on videotape by their principal, mean old Mr. Krupp. Mr. Krupp threatens to release the videotape of their hijinks to the football team if they don't follow a strict list of demands. Fearing the wrath of the football team for costing them the big game they comply and behave like perfect angels for weeks upon miserable weeks.

Fed up with being good boys, the friends devise a plan to hypnotize Mr. Krupp into handing over the videotape by using a gimmicky 3-D Hypno-Ring. The plan works and the boys switch the incriminating tape with Harold's little sister's "Boomer the Purple Dragon Sing-A-Long" tape. The boys play around making Mr. Krupp act like a monkey and a chicken and finally Captain Underpants!

Harold and George really have their hands full following Captain Underpants around on his mission to search out and fight crime. Captain Underpants meets his match in Dr. Diaper, the little criminal whose robots steal a crystal to power the Lasermatic 2000 which was created to blow up the moon sending huge chunks of it crashing to the Earth's surface enabling Dr. Diaper to rise up from the mess and take over. To make a long story short, Captain Underpants prevails with the help of Harold and George, aka the Robot bashers, and they get away delivering evil Dr. Diaper to the police on their way back to school.

Back at school, Harold and George attempt to undo their hypnosis, but because they can't find the directions they struggle to bring back mean old Mr. Krupp. Finally, they pour water over his head which seems to do the trick, but if they had read the directions they would've noticed that pouring water over someone in a trance will only cause them to slip back and forth between trance and reality whenever they hear the sound of finger snapping!

This book primarily appeals to 4th grade and older boys, but can also be enjoyable for girls as well. Each page contains illustrations and perhaps the best feature is Flip-O-Rama the unique illustration technique that allows kids to animate the action by flipping quickly back and forth between two pages.

Genre: Realistic Fiction/Fantasy

Pilkey, D. (1997). The adventures of Captain Underpants: an epic novel. New York: Blue Sky Press.