Capt. Underpants series invades kids' minds, encourages reading

Published: Wednesday, April 05, 2000

Faster than a speeding waistband. ... More powerful than boxer shorts. ... Able to leap tall buildings without getting a wedgie.

He's Capt. Underpants and kids just can't get enough of him.

Since the silly superhero's publishing debut three years ago, the series has been flying off the shelves. There are nearly 6 million Capt. Underpants books in print.

The series' main characters are George and Harold, two fourth-grade boys who are usually responsible in the sense that "whenever anything bad happened, George and Harold were usually responsible."

In the first book, the mischievous boys hypnotize their school principal into believing he's Capt. Underpants.

Mr. Krupp promptly strips to his skivvies and runs off into the city, looking for crime to fight. He ends up battling the evil Dr. Diaper, and, in subsequent books, matches his Wedgie Power against an army of talking toilets, aliens posing as cafeteria ladies and Professor Poopypants.

Merwan Shafa, a 9-year-old who attends Maher School in Lafayette, has read the whole series.

"I've read some of the books five times, some of them probably 10 times," said the third-grader. "They're funny and exciting, and I think the author just knows how to get into kids' heads."

The culprit here is Dav Pilkey.

Pilkey, 34, says he dreamed up Capt. Underpants during elementary school, when he often got in trouble for clowning in class and drawing silly comic books.

Linda Duncan, children's specialist for the Contra Costa County (Calif.) library system, said librarians use the Capt. Underpants series to inspire children to read for fun.

"I think that Dav Pilkey has just nailed the sense of humor that kids who are 7, 8 and 9 have perfectly."

Librarian Celeste Higham said, "If you've got a Y chromosome, you love these books.

"I send them to my grandson, and my son loves them. My husband reads them, too.

"They read them over and over again, and they laugh while tears roll down their cheeks. They choke while they're reading it, because they're laughing so hard."

As you might guess, Capt.Underpants is not without controversy. Some parents say the books encourage children's penchant for crude, bathroom-inspired humor.

Recently, the books were banned from a Connecticut elementary school, where fourth-grade fans reportedly became a bit too enthusiastic.

"The boys started getting whooped up as Capt. Underpants, saying things like 'You're in your underpants,'" the school superintendent told the Associated Press.

No one is calling Capt. Underpants great literature, of course. Half of each page is devoted to pictures, and each book contains several pages of Flip-O-Rama, animation the reader activates by flipping rapidly between two pages.

Still, kids wrapped up in the stories end up reading through 100-plus pages, bumping into words such as "colossal" and "gullible" along the way. And most teachers and librarians agree that what Capt. Underpants makes up for whatever it lacks in intellectual heft in the enthusiasm the series inspires for reading.

"If it's going to make them giggle, and it's going to make them pick up a book, it's probably a good thing as long as it's not offensive to the family," said Debbie Supple, who coordinates early literacy efforts through the Contra Costa County Office of Education.

"Remember that what kids find hysterical, adults may think is overly silly. If you get into kids' heads, it's one way to really grab their attention and make them want to read."