Wedgieman: A Hero Is Born (review)

This new superhero may sound like the successor to Captain Underpants, but that wasn't his original plan. As this origin story explains, he was actually born Veggiebaby ("He wasn't scared of vegetables, no matter what they looked like"), and grew from Veggieboy into Veggieman. When he saved a boy stuck in a tree, the rejoicing children, misreading the stick-amended V on his chest, cheered their new hero, "Wedgieman," who confirmed the rightness of his new title by adjusting his uncomfortable costume. Harper is a master of tersely humorous sentences, and she displays that talent to good effect in this easy reader, broadly winking at the reader with the satiric over-the-top advocacy for vegetables while keeping the text spare and accessible. There's both a retro flair and a faint touch of South Park to Shea's digital illustrations, which rely strongly on flat, geometric graphics in a palette that emphasizes (naturally) veggie green. With its cheerfully irreverent approach, this is both helpfully formulaic and wittily inclusive, a combination that will be welcome to youngsters who watch at a much higher sophistication level than they read.