“The Extraordinary Adventures of Ordinary Boy”, by William Boniface

Boniface, William, and Stephen Gilpin. The Hero Revealed: the Extraordinary Adventures of Ordinary Boy. New York: HarperCollins, 2006. Print.

Both of my boys read and enjoyed this book, and I quite liked it too. In Superopolis everyone has a unique superpower, except the main character. It’s a premise that any super-hero-obsessed 11-year-old boy would be willing to give a chance, and Ordinary Boy is such a likable character, and the book so action-packed, that they are not disappointed.

OB, as he is known for short, and his friends in his team, the “Junior Leaguers” help their parents to defeat Superopolis’s biggest villain, Professor Brain-Drain. The book does fall a bit into that annoying kid’s book trap of having kids present and helping at events that in real life would be too scary for them, but hey, we obviously suspended a lot of belief at the whole superpower notion, right?

Highly recommended, especially for boys around Grade 4 or 5 who are into Spiderman and dream of having their own powers.