By Dan Santat
A superhero puts out a call for a sidekick, and his own neglected pets apply in secret, without telling each other.
Captain Amazing is the hero of Metro City and he is getting old and slow. He's also out most nights catching criminals, which leaves his pets at home on their own: a wheezy old dog, a hamster, and a chameleon. So when the Captain announces he's holding auditions for a sidekick, all three of them try out. None of them tells the others. Meanwhile Dr. Havoc, the villain the Captain has been fighting his whole career, is putting together one last scheme, and a cat with a grudge is circling the whole thing.
This is the one on the shelf that looks like a film. Dan Santat went on to win the Caldecott, and the art here is enormous, cinematic, and the kind a child will stop and stare at. But the reason it sticks is that the story belongs to the animals nobody noticed, and the thing they all want is not to be powerful, it's to be picked. A child who has ever felt like the spare part in a room understands that on page one without anyone explaining it. It's funny, it moves, and it's a single complete story, so nothing is left dangling.