The New Captain Underpants Collection (Books 1-5) Paperback – Box set, August 1, 2002

"NO POTTY TALK AT THE TABLE!" I yell at dinner almost every night. Why would I want to encourage my kids with books like Captain Underpants? Just read one! Dav Pilkey is a genius. The plots are silly but the brio and incredible energy are contagious and anything but retrobate. These books crackle with humor, action, and fun. Honestly, if you aren't at least moderately amused yourself (never mind your kids) check your pulse. How do my kids feel? My six year old son reads these by himself in a single sitting and periodically laughs out loud. Sometimes he laughs so hard he ends up on the floor rolling around. Am I really going to stand in the way of this kind of fun?George and Harold riff off the age old issues of the powerlessness of kids and the fantasy of possessing cosmic power in a readily accessible comic book form. Invariably some kind of threat to the world (monsters from space, mad scientists, etc...) are defeated by our class clowns Harold and George with the help of their school principle (hypnotized and possessed of magic powers) Captain Underpants. There's some very light comic book style violence, but mostly there's clever tech and lots of slapstick hoodwinks and hijinks. It's not going to win the Nobel Prize for Literature or anything - but it's aimed right at kid's entertainment monkey bone. There's plenty of lightly scatalogical humor (boogers and potty stuff). When I mean light, I mean light. For example our dynamic duo pranks a stick in the mud classmate by rearranging the sign that originally read "Please wash your hands after using the toilet" to read "Please wash your hands in the toilet" - and then he does. This had my little son in stitches. Kid's know it's joking - and it's exactly the kind of joking they do with each other.As a parent I'd rather he were reading science or literature than this drivel - but it's a smart move. As a jumping off point for reading - for emphasizing the important message that reading is fun - there is no equal to this series. It's fun, silly, easy to read, and loaded with street cred. Kids will find it irresistible and will actively choose to read. My little son really fell in love with reading devouring Captain Underpants. Then we kept him well stocked with books and encouraged him to read and now he's moved on to more serious stuff.

EDUCATIONALLY SOUND?Some parents find the Captain Underpants humor crude and the misspellings in the "kid"-drawn sections to be counter-productive, but I've found the opposite. My kid is ENJOYING BOOKS--learning that books can be fun and enjoyable--through the humor. He's making CONNECTIONS from text-to-life and is able to RETELL or SUMMARIZE stories. Although he has copied some of the misspellings in his own drawings, these have become "teachable" moments and have actually helped him pay better attention to SPELLING RULES at school. At one point, he picked out a word that was spelled wrong and felt so proud of himself because he could "spell better" than Dav Pilkey. More important, the books teach TEXT FEATURES--something that many students struggle with when first learning how to read. The combination of text and graphics, the different formats, the checklists and whathaveyou all taught my child to look at the entire page instead of just focusing on pictures or picture-reading (or ignoring the pictures all together).If you look back at the all-caps words, you won't find a teacher around who wouldn't be happy to see a child acquiring or practicing those skills--especially as an EARLY reader!WORTH IT?I bought this series for my son when he turned five, and I haven't regretted it! He was an advanced reader, and the "Step" books just weren't holding his interest anymore, so we needed something FAST to keep his interest in reading.We read 1-5 once together, and he's read each book several times on his own. (He's now six.) Even better, the books opened up doors to new interests and acted as an excellent bridge into comic books, graphic novels, and chapter books. It also expanded his vocabulary! He's since devoured Diary of a Wimpy Kid, the Bone series, the Geronimo Stilton books, various Pokemon books, and the Magic Tree House collection--but he keeps coming back to Captain Underpants. He especially loves CU and the Perilous Plot of Professor Poopypants.From Captain Underpants, he's become obsessed with robots and aliens and building things, which led to Legos and a hundred new interests. He also draws his own comics all the time, after first trying to copy CU comics and drawings into his "own" book. As a mother, this melts my heart. As a teacher, this makes me dance with joy!COMPLAINTMy only complaint it that the next set is 5-8, meaning you get a duplicate book if you buy both. If you're invested in this series, you might be better off buying 1-8 or 1-11 instead of buying this particular set.Also check of the "Crunchy Fun" activity books for the series. My son loved them!

My 8 year old son absolutely loves these books. My son does very well in school, but the one area he lacks is in reading comprehension and simply paying attention while reading. He's so used to all the flashy screens and games we have now that reading bores him most of the time. These books changed all that for him and he finds the humor in them hilarious, and it is honestly pretty entertaining even to me sometimes. He comes home from school now and he WANTS to read his books and do his daily reading comprehension homework.These books for whatever reason really grabbed my sons interest and they have helped him tremendously with his reading. The books obviously didn't do the work for him, but they gave him that spark and interest that he needed. I highly recommend them to anyone with kids in his age range, even if they already love reading they are sure like them!And as always, if Amazon knows how to do anything it's books, and the price is right.

The kids love this series (ages 3 & 5). We got this five-book set after watching the movie. The stories are silly and full of kid humor. Some of the jokes were over my kids' head, but that just means they will enjoy new layers as they get older. The mixed media (standard book pages, comic book pages, flip-action pages) keeps them engaged, and they particularly like the flip-action pages. As a parent reading the book, I had fun with them as well. They are certainly books we can read periodically for a number of years to come, so it was definitely a good buy.