CHARLIE SUPER F

The latest in a series, originally published in Spanish, featuring the resourceful and persistent Charlie.

Charlie is exceptionally small, with oversized spectacles, which he acquired in the first installment. Now he’s obsessed with flies. He follows their flight paths so fixedly that his teacher calls him out for daydreaming. Surely the world needs a fly-inspired superhero? Charlie may not be “tough and strong,” but he trains hard. His buddy Big Mike notes that he needs an appropriate costume, so Charlie devises one from bits and bobs, confident that he’ll be “the first superhero in the world to wear eyeglasses!” Charlie is equally certain about his superpower: He can make himself invisible to the human eye. Unfortunately, not to the canine eye: He’s soon terrorized by a dog “the size of an elephant.” What a metamorphosis. Having just been “defeated” by the dog’s gargantuan tongue, Charlie suddenly presents himself as “Fearless Dog-Tamer!” The abrupt, head-spinning ending might baffle some readers, but kids will root for this underdog and enjoy the tongue-in-cheek humor (Charlie genuinely believes that his teacher pays such close attention to him because he’s her favorite student). The quirky line drawings effectively amplify the exaggeration of the text; Charlie’s body is relatively tiny, while his huge, black-framed glasses dominate his small face. Characters have skin the white of the page.

Readers will cheer this minuscule, bespectacled hero.