I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: CAPTAIN BOGG & SALTY-“Scurvy” (1999).

For the first Captain Underpants book I used “The Puking Song” as a soundtrack.  Turns out that would have been better suited for this book as the are a lot of puking  toilets in this story.

Captain Bogg & Salty scored the number 4 slot in this year’s WXPN/Kid’s Corner vote for best song of the year.  I’m always confused when a song makes their Ton Ten list and I had never heard it (we listen a lot, but not all the time; however there are some songs that we hear constantly .

The song is thirteen years old and comes from their debut album.   But before I get into the song I need to copy this line from Wikipedia: Captain Bogg and Salty is a pirate-themed rock band from Portland, Oregon, and a representative member of the subgenre of pirate rock.

Subgenre of pirate rock.  I love it.

So “Scurvy” is a fast-paced shanty with the sensible lyrical precaution: “when there is scurvy on your pirate ship…eat a lime.  EAT A LIME!”  What else is on the pirate ship?  Cannonballs, peglegs, rum and er…rabbits?  This song is fun and rocking and very silly.    I really hope to hear it on the radio some night.

So the band performs for both children and adults.   And, amusingly they perform the same songs (in full costume) for both audiences

Turns out members of this band also write music for Jake and the Never Land Pirates, which my daughter loves.  A nice circle.   Now I’m off to uncover this pirate rock subgenre.

[READ: January 22, 2013] The Adventures of Captain Underpants

I enjoyed the first Captain Underpants book and Clark has been digesting them very quickly.  So I thought I’d check out the sequel.  And it does not disappoint.

The book opens with a recap of the first book, in hilarious comic book form (drawn by the kids).  The short book ends with the warning from George and Harold (who deny responsibility) not to snap your fingers around Principal Krupp because it will make him turn back into Captain Underpants (which was in the instructions for the HypnoRing that they discarded).

But before we even see the Captain, we see George and Harold in school.  They are very excited to read that the upcoming Invention Convention features a grand prize of being Principal for a Day.  They immediately decide to win it.  Then we get a flashback to last year’s convention where not only did they not wind, they put glue on everyone’s seat and got in huge trouble.  But this year, Krupp is ready for them and has not only banned then from submitting, he has banned them from even attending.

This doesn’t stop them of course, in fact, it just makes them sneak into the auditorium the night before to play tricks on everyone’s projects.  I have great respect for Pilkey for a) the crazy inventions he has the kids make and b) the clever way he pranks them.  But before they can do any damage they see that Melvin Sneedly has created the PATSY 2000 from a photocopier.  The boys mock the name until he explains that it’s an acronym for Photo-Atomic Trans-Somgobulating Yectofantriplutoniczanziptomiser.  Which is an absurd way of saying that it photocopies pictures and makes them come to life.

Melvin gives an example with a mouse. George and Harold assume it’s a trick and that he had a mouse under the copier all along.  The boys have a new comic that they’ve been working on called Captain Underpants and the Attack of the Talking Toilets.  And they need to make copies of it to sell after school.  But when the office copiers are in use, they remember PATSY.

Soon enough the talking toilets are eating all of the teachers and terrorizing the town.   They need help and when Miss Anthrope snaps her fingers, well, her comes the Captain!

I liked that in this book, the boys actually help the Captain fight.  That was a neat twist.  I also really laughed at some of the teacher’s names, which either weren’t in book one or which I simply missed: Mr Meaner and Ms Ribble (which only work when you say them aloud).  This book also has two flip-o-ramas (another thing that Clark wanted to copy for his comic, but he didn’t have the patience .  In the flip-o-rama section, you flip one page back and forth to “animate” the book (hoping that you don’t rip the library book pages any more than all the other kids did).

There’s quite a few more Captain books.  And I’m on board to read them all.  My only complaint is that in the comics that  the kids make, they misspell words.   I know they are kids and kids are likely to misspell words, but I feel like you need to set a good spelling example for kids so that they don’t grow up thinking words are spelled the wrong way because t hat’s how it was spelled in their favorite books.