**Starred Review** Booklist
At the beginning of this new book we find the boys –Harold and George– at the Piqua detention center. Poor ex-Principal Krupp, aka Captain Underpants, is similarly incarcerated. [If you remember he was arrested in book#8 for robbing a bank.]Now enters the enigmatic Tippy Tinkletrousers, the former Professor Poopypants. He is also in prison, but not for long. He tricks the prison's commandant and creates a giant pair of robotic pants. Chaos ensues. Harold, George, Krupp, and Tinkletrousers escape... not only their prisons but the present as they are catapulted to the past where this book, number one of two, ends with a cliffhanger. (Alas we need the next volume!)
I read this book with Dave, my test audience (age 10). We've been reading and enjoying the Captain Underpants books since Dave was in Second Grade. And well I remember how incredibly excited he was to introduce me to this 'cool new book' that was all the rage amongst the guys at school.
This current book I think is more ambitious than it's earlier siblings. It's longer than any of the other volumes, and it has a more complicated plot involving more sophisticated concepts like time travel and how changing events in the past changes the future.
Dave's take on Tinkletrousers is that it's good, but not his favorite adventure. I think this is because the book was slow to start. Being almost twice as long as some of the other Captain Underpants books, it wasn't until nearly page 100 that the background was laid out and the usual hijinks and fun –flip-o-ramas and sign re-arrangments!– took off.
Tinkletrousers seems like a step forward to me. Like OOK and GLUK this new addition to the Captain Underpants family seems to have been written for the more mature end of Pilkey's admiring audience. Still funny. Still studded with plenty of goofy jokes. The very youngest readers might have to skim through the first chapters before they arrive in familiar territory that's going to really grab their attention.
This current book I think is more ambitious than it's earlier siblings. It's longer than any of the other volumes, and it has a more complicated plot involving more sophisticated concepts like time travel and how changing events in the past changes the future.
Dave's take on Tinkletrousers is that it's good, but not his favorite adventure. I think this is because the book was slow to start. Being almost twice as long as some of the other Captain Underpants books, it wasn't until nearly page 100 that the background was laid out and the usual hijinks and fun –flip-o-ramas and sign re-arrangments!– took off.
Tinkletrousers seems like a step forward to me. Like OOK and GLUK this new addition to the Captain Underpants family seems to have been written for the more mature end of Pilkey's admiring audience. Still funny. Still studded with plenty of goofy jokes. The very youngest readers might have to skim through the first chapters before they arrive in familiar territory that's going to really grab their attention.
Pam T
Somewhere in the X-burbs
Captain Underpants and the Terrifying
Return of Tippy Tinkletrousers
by Dav Pilkey
- Hardcover: 304 pages
- Publisher: Scholastic Inc. (August 28, 2012)
- ISBN-10: 0545175348
El Capitan Calzoncillos y el terrorifico retorno de Cacapipi
- Paperback: 304 pages
- Publisher: Scholastic en Espanol (January 1, 2013)
- ISBN-10: 0545488702
You can find a list of Reading Levels & AR Quiz Numbers for all of Dav Pilkey's wonderful Captain Underpants books at our sister site –Good Books for Kids Lists! – here.
For Dav's different series, you can check his Index.
For Dav's different series, you can check his Index.
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