Superman Classic: Pranking News

by Donald Lemke, Patrick Spaziante (Illustrations)

When Mister Mxyzptlk starts pulling dangerous pranks all over Metropolis to get into the headlines, Superman™ uses his ties at the Daily Planet to trick the trickster into taking a serious time-out! Perfect for Super Hero fans, Superman Pranking News is a Level Two I Can Read book, geared for kids who read on their own but still need a little help.

Genres: Childrens, Picture Books

32 pages, Paperback

First published May 3, 2016

About the author

Donald Lemke works as a children's book editor. He has written dozens of all-age comics and children's books for Capstone, HarperCollins, Running Press, and more. Donald lives in St. Paul, Minnesota with his beautiful wife, Amy, toddling toddler, Cleo, and a not-so-golden retriever named Paulie.

Reviews

[Nicki]

No beginning reader can possibly pronounce the villain's name. I had a hard time with it.

[Cassandra Gelvin]

Pointless story with wasted potential.

This is a weird book. I'm glad that it has a pronunciation guide for the name of Mxyzptlk, because otherwise you'd have no idea how to pronounce it. He's kind of a weird Superman villain. I guess there's kind of a conflict in that the pranks that Mxyzptlk plays are possibly dangerous and deadly, and Mxyzptlk doesn't seem concerned by that. But Superman isn't really doing anything terribly interesting.

He doesn't have to make any decisions beyond figuring out how to solve the problem. That only works because Mxyzptlk's pranks are very literal. Something inflates like a hot air balloon, and Superman blows freeze breath at it to cool it down so it doesn't fly anymore. It's weird. The illustrations are good. It doesn't seem any more or less interesting than any other books. It's pretty bland as far as a Superman story goes. Nobody dies or gets hurt.

Mr. Mxyzptlk comes, plays a bunch of pranks, Superman saves the day. There's no real message, which is strange for Superman. You would think that they could come up with some kind of message, but it's not even trying for a message. Maybe that's good.

For more children's book reviews, see my website at http://www.drttmk.com.

[Asho]

S continues to make his way through every single "I Can Read" superhero book in our local library. This one was not our favorite, however. He checked it out because he hadn't read it yet, but then admitted that he was pretty freaked out by the look of the villain on the cover and wasn't sure he actually wanted to read it. He did decide to read it eventually but then I was irritated because the villain's name is such a pain to pronounce and is repeated way too often. We also thought the book's resolution wasn't that great.
In general he loves these types of books way more than I do, but this one in particular was one I was happy he only wanted to read once.

[Nicola]

Miss 3 saw Superman (of whom she has only the very vaguest notion) and wanted to read this. I had to keep taking my sunglasses on and off to be Clark Kent / Superman! I'd forgotten that Superman had ice breath and laser eyes (I think I mostly watched Lois & Clark). I only thing I found frustrating in reading it aloud to her was the villain's name (and how often it came up in the text) so I mostly settled on calling him The Trickster.

[Bryan]

I found the funny side of pronouncing this villan, Mxyzptlk. It is so hard to pronounce and SOOO many times it's been written that I had such a laugh reading it!

It's a long and winding humour!

Isn't that part of the joy of reading? We find weird and unfamiliar words to read?

[Cathy]

Thanks to the weird and long villain's name, my son loved this book! He couldn't stop laughing. We read this book at least 4 or 5 times within a week! It definitely was a mouthful but it's all worth it when you see your child has a love of reading!

[Sadie Seney]

If your kid likes superheroes, this is a good one! In this story Superman is up agains Mr. Mxyzplk, a man from the 5th dimension who has lots of pranks! Superman uses his daily planet Clark Kent role to trick the man but you will have to read it to know how it ends!

[Ellington Carroll]

Not good, not bad, and not really funny. Mxyzptlk looks easy to defeat.

[Kim]

I nabbed this from the library because Mxy is my favourite Superman villain and I wanted to introduce him to Mini-Me. I clearly didn't think this through, because Mxy's full name is a tongue twister once, forget the multiple times it appears in this book. And then I had to try and pronounce it backwards. As another reviewer mentioned, this may not be the best book for an early reader.