By Dav Pilkey
Two prankster friends hypnotize their crabby principal into a caped superhero who charges around town fighting crime in his underwear.
George and Harold are two fourth-graders who write their own comic books and pull off gigantic pranks. When their mean principal, Mr. Krupp, catches them on tape and threatens to split them up, they mail off for a hypno-ring and zap him, and he turns into Captain Underpants, the goofy hero from their comics, running around town in nothing but underwear and a cape to fight the evil Dr. Diaper. Snap your fingers and he's grumpy Mr. Krupp again. Splash him with water and he's back to being the Captain in his undies. The story keeps stopping to become a comic strip, and there are Flip-O-Rama pages you riffle fast with your thumb to make the punches and kicks move.
If you've got a child who insists reading is boring, this is often the one that flips them. There are pictures on nearly every page and the chapters are short, so the wall of text they dread just isn't there. The jokes are exactly what a seven-year-old finds funniest, and Pilkey leans all the way in instead of apologizing for it. Mine tore through six of these once the first one clicked, and there's a long shelf of sequels and spin-offs behind it, so one hit buys you a good stretch of easy bedtimes.