The Incredible Three and a Half Superheroes, not super or OK for young kids

The Incredible Three and a Half Superheroes, should in theory be a middle school book that I would love and highly recommend. It’s about superheroes, has loose happy drawings sprinkled throughout the book and has a playful vibe about it. And for a while it was all of those things, but then the book hit a couple four letter speed bumps and knocked the entire thing off course for us.

At its heart The Incredible Three and a Half Superheroes aims for the Wimpy Kid crowd. In this case Sebastian Appleby-Krumble leads a group of middle school superheroes. He’s called the Brain, Barbara Bakewell is Action Barbie, Martin Kowalkski is the Chameleon and Martin’s imaginary friend Dickie is the Chicken.

The group goes through some of the superhero hoops like imaging teachers are super villains, the cafeteria, physical education and dealing with classmates. Each chapter is around 7 pages long and features at least one drawing to depict what is going on in the story. It’s an engaging book until the 100^th page when the author uses a four letter word.

I know that kids will curse. They’ll say words that are much worse that words that rhyme with ‘fit’. While that one word was concerning I read on and then a couple of pages later there was another word that I don’t want my kids saying.

Again, they’ll say words that are much worse that those they rhyme with ‘dammed’, but I don’t want them saying them around me. Much less, if they read them in a book that is aimed at them that are, in essence giving them permission to use it.

I kept reading the book, but just couldn’t enjoy it as much as I did before the author put the bad language in there. It is not horrible language and I feel like I have to state that to prove that I’m no prude. However, this is a children’s book and something that’s aimed at middle school kids does not need that.

That is the other part that’s frustrating about the book is that the language is not needed. It doesn’t carry any aspect of the story forward, it is just there. Granted, kids say it, but we, as parents and educators don’t want them to say it. I’ll akin it to a child chanting nonny, nonny boo boo.

The very optimistic (and delusional) side of you may say, awesome, my child is singing!  However, you’re quick to find out that chant is not singing and quickly gets annoying. That’s how you’ll feel about reading The Incredible Three and a Half Superheroes after the cursing speed bumps.

It’s tolerable before it hits the fan and is difficult to recover after that fact.  Older kids, say high school age would be OK reading it, but would find the vocabulary and set up of the book too juvenile. Summer is too short to waste on bad books. This isn’t a bad book. There are no bad books, just as there are no bad questions that a child can ask. It’s just that there are so many more books that your child will enjoy reading before they get to this one.