This is the sequel to My Brother Is A Superhero, but it works perfectly well as a standalone book. It stars a young lad named Luke and funnily enough, his brother is a superhero.
It's actually quite hard to live in the shadow of a world-saving sibling, even worse when your neighbour is also a superhero and if the asteroid had aligned slightly differently, that could have been you. Although she does have the superpower to control small animals and calls herself Dark Flutter, which is all a bit twee, so Luke isn't too jealous...
The book has only a few simple and small illustrations by Laura Ellen Anderson. It's easy to read and written in a fairly casual, chatty style that has a great flow and is very accessible to your 9 year old independent reader.
My Gym Teacher Is An Alien Overlord starts with Mum shouting her son down from playing computer games to come for his tea, and you pass through just about anything you can think of on the way to the end - aliens, alternate universes, zoolingualism, telepathy, robots and superheroes. It's an eclectic mix that goes together seamlessly and you are happy to accept it all.
The characters have real depth. Superheroes and villains are real people, not just names and abilities with a bit of romance to humanise them. They drink tea and do homework, have self-doubt and jealousy. They are distinctive characters and you very quickly start to appreciate their personalities. It's actually a feature of the book and a recurring mention that by truly knowing someone, you can begin to understand their motivations, weaknesses and strengths.
My Gym Teacher Is An Alien Overlord is a really great book which genuinely had me laughing out loud as I read (and I'm a smidgen older than 13). It's intriguing and exciting, and plays out so well that you want to keep reading just to stay immersed in their superhero world/real world madness.
Full of action and adventure, videogames, world-saving and comedy moments, this is an excellent choice for any fluent independent reader, and ideal for a reader who is ready to face their first full size chapter book.
My Gym Teacher Is An Alien Overlord is written by David Solomon and has 298 pages. Available to
buy now rrp £6.99, currently £4.99 from the Scholastic Books website or from your local Scholastic Books School Book Club.
The Laugh Out Loud Awards, or Lollies, were created when the Kids & Family Reading Report by Scholastic found that 2/3 of children aged 6-17 searched for ‘books that make me laugh’ for themselves.
There are 12 books on the shortlist, split in 3 age categories - 2-5, 6-8 and 9-13. Finalists were selected by a panel headed by Michael Rosen, and including CBBC presenter Katie Thistleton and The Sunday Times’ Children’s Books Editor, Nicolette Jones. The winning book in each category will be decided solely by children’s votes.
Our other Lollies Finalist review is Future Rat Boy and the Invasion of the Nom Noms by Jim Smith.
Voting closes on 8th December and the winner will be announced in January 2018.
You can find out more about the twelve books on the shortlist, as
well as activity sheets, lesson plans and competitions, and vote for
your favourite until 8th December on the Laugh Out Loud Awards website.
You can also buy packs of books with each of the finalists for £9.99 per age group (4 books) or the entire bundle of all 12 Lollies finalists for only £24.99 - saving a massive £55 over the rrp.
We were sent our copy of My Gym Teacher Is An Alien Overlord for review.
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