ZAPATO POWER

When a mysterious gift turns out to be superpowered purple sneakers, Freddie Ramos looks for ways to be a superhero. Using his super speed, he fetches a library book. He cleans a wall and a sidewalk where someone had written a bathroom word, and he saves a small dog. Designed for early readers, this chapter book includes frequent black-and-white cartoon illustrations featuring kids with outsized round heads. At one point two comics-style pages interrupt the text to show Freddie searching for the dog. The few Spanish words establish the boy’s ethnicity but will be understood in context. Unusually, for the genre, the author works in a back story for her characters: Freddie’s soldier father was killed two years earlier; his mother has recently finished school and gotten a better job and nicer apartment for herself and her son. Episodic in nature, the narrative leaves open the possibility for sequels when Freddie discovers the sneaker inventor. An unusually appealing early chapter book. (Fiction. 6-9)