Super Hair-O and the Barber of Doom by John Rocco (review)

Rocco and his three scruffy, wild-mopped pals are surely endowed with superpowers. How else could they dirt-bike off a milk carton and board ramp, skateboard over toy cars and trains, kick down stacks of Legos, or leap from a ladder into a wading pool? Rocco is certain that the source of his own power is his hair—a monstrous halo of reddish-brown kinks nearly as high as he is tall. Imagine, then the horror of being captured (by your father) and “dragged away to the villain’s lair” (the barber shop) where your dynamic force is reduced to a sad pile of clippings. Rocco’s concern that the barber will curtail his powers is only matched by his fear of what his friends will say—but when they meet up at the playground, the whole crew is similarly shorn. Fortunately, a little girl sizes up their situation and takes pity. Stranding her doll atop the monkey bars, she calls out for a hero, thereby restoring the friends’ raison d’être: “After we saved the day, it was obvious that even without hair . . . we were STILL SUPER!” Adult Rocco (Blackout, BCCB 6/11), who provides proof of his superpowered locks in a juvenile photograph on the jacket flap, has a fine time pumping up this wild memoir with comic-book conventions from speech bubbles to splash pages, Ben Day dot backdrops to sound effects. Colors fade to gray tones when the boys hit the depths of their despair, and rebound to full color as they race to the rescue and set their world aright. Hand this to kids who embrace the comics-style picture books of Kevin O’Malley.