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Captain Underpants

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This article is about the children's book series, for the character see Captain Underpants (character).
The first Captain Underpants book.

The Captain Underpants series, by Dav Pilkey, is a series of American children's books about two 4th graders, George Beard and Harold Hutchins, and the aptly-named superhero they accidentally create by hypnotizing their principal, Mr. Benny Krupp. The book series had recently won a Disney Adventures Kids Choice Award.[1]The most recent book in the series, Captain Underpants and the Preposterous Plight of the Purple Potty People, was released on August 15, 2006. Ever since the first book was published, Dav received letters from parents of reluctant readers, telling him that their kids who hated reading enjoyed and loved Captain Underpants.[2]

Overview

Development

David "Dav" Pilkey originally got the idea of Captain Underpants back when he was in the second grade. Dav says during in interview:[3]

I got the idea when I was a second grader at St. John's Lutheran School in Elyria, Ohio. My teacher used the word "underpants" in class one day and everyone started laughing. She got mad and told us that underwear was not funny. We all laughed harder. Usually, when the class cracked up, it was because of something I had said or done. But our teacher had never made everybody laugh so hard before. I realized then that the word "underpants" was a very funny word. On the school bus home that day, I was making up a story about underwear and some younger kids in the seat behind me were laughing so hard, they almost fell on the floor. The next day, while sitting in the hallway — I spent lots of time in the hallway because I often misbehaved in class — I invented a superhero named Captain Underpants.

The debut novel, The Adventures of Captain Underpants which Dav Pilkey had created, was based on a super hero that he invented in 1973.[4]When Dav Pilkey began making children books in 1986, starting with World War Won, his goal was to one day publish a book about Captain Underpants. Because of that, he wrote several different versions of the story, including a 48 page comic book. Afterwards, he sent the versions of the story to many different publishers. For years, every publisher who saw it turned it down. It was not until 1995 until the book was finally accepted; the first Captain Underpants book was published in the United States by Scholastic, Inc. in March 1997.

Major characters

  • George Beard and Harold Hutchins - Two pranksters who are best friends and next-door neighbors. George is identified with his tie and flat top. Likewise, Harold is recognizable with his T-shirt and bad haircut. They have saved the world eight times now. George is 9¾ years old while Harold is 10 years old. They are currently the class clowns of 4th grade at Jerome Horwitz Elementary School, a school which discourages imagination.
  • Mr. Benny Krupp - George and Harold's meanest, and sourest princpal in their school. Princpal Krupp has a very deep hatred against other children, especially with George and Harold. He constantly tries to make up schemes to punish George and Harold, and also to protect Jerome Horwitz Elementary from the boys' antics.
  • Captain Underpants - The main hero of the series. He always wears a red cape with black polka-dots and a pair of white briefs. He is really Mr. Krupp hypnotized to think he is Captain Underpants, a character created by George and Harold. When he gets water poured on his head it turns him back into Mr. Krupp. Whenever Mr. Krupp hears the sound of fingers snapping, he turns back to Captain Underpants which causes George and Harold to follow him and keep him out of trouble. In book 3, Captain Underpants drank a carton of Super Power Juice that caused him to have super strength and the ability to fly into the air.
  • Melvin Sneedly - George and Harold's nerdy nemesis. He is an annoying tattle-tale and a mechanical genius. He was first introduced in book 2. Melvin is described as "the kid with the bowtie and glasses". He was the main villain of book 6 after accidentally transforming himself into the Bionic Booger Boy.
  • Ms. Tarra Ribble- George and Harold's mean 4th grade teacher, introduced in book 1 as an unnamed character. In book 5, she turned evil after George and Harold accidentally made her think she was Wedgie Woman, one of the characters in their comic books. Afterwards, the two best friends made changed her behavior to be nicer and happier with their 3D Hypno-Ring, including making her serve freshly-baked cookies to the class every day of school.
  • Mr. Meaner - Jerome Horwitz Elementary School's gym teacher; he's depicted as being a fat man, and with a personally similar to Mr. Krupp's. Like him, he is very cruel to students and often yells at them.
  • Sulu and Crackers - Introduced characters from book 6 to book 7. Sulu was Melvin's abandoned pet hamster after he yelled at Sulu which offended him badly, but afterwards adopted by George and Harold. Crackers is their pet Quetzalcoatlus. Both appeared in the Big, Bad, Battle of the Bionic Booger Boy part 1 and 2. Sulu was briefly a villain after being hypnotized by Evil George and Evil Harold in The Preposterous Plight of the Purple Potty People. Crackers was hypnotized as well, but didn't turn evil.
  • Boxer Boy and Great Granny Girdle - Appearing in the eighth book, Boxer Boy and Great Granny Girdle are (respectively) Harold's grandfather and George's great-grandmother. They battled (and beat) Captain Blunderpants to save their grandsons. George and Harold accidentally gave them Super Power Juice while showing them a new comic in a two-family dinner during grandparents' day.

Captain Underpants Main Series

Super Diaper Baby and Others

Treehouse Comix

These Captain Underpants stories are George and Harold's comics that appear in the books.

  • Book 1; The Adventures of Captain Underpants (6 pages)
  • Book 2; Captain Underpants and the Talking Toliets (6 pages) and The Top-Secret Truth About Captain Underpants (3 pages)
  • Book 3; Captain Underpants and the Night of the Living Lunch Ladies (6 pages) and Wedgie Wars (3 pages)
  • Book 4: Captain Underpants and the Pied Pooper of Piqua (6 pages) and The Top-Secret About Captain Underpants (3 pages)
  • Book 5: Captain Underpants and the Wrath of the Wicked Wedgie Woman (8 pages), The Orgin of Captain Underpants (7 pages) and The Trouble With Captain Underpants (3 pages)
  • Book 6: Captain Underpants and the Terrifying Tale of the Tattle-Tron 2000 (9 pages) and The Awful Truth About Captain Underpants (4 pages)
  • Book 7: Captain Underpants and the War of the Wily Wonder Nerd (9 pages) and The sad, sad Truth About Captain Underpants (8 pages)
  • Book 8: The Preposterous Plight of Captain Blunderpants (7 pages), The Adventures of Boxer Boy and Great-Granny Girdle (13 pages) and The Often Told Untold Story of Captain Underpants (6 pages)
  • Super Diaper Baby Book 1: The Adventures of Super Diaper Baby (109 pages) and The Orgin of Super Diaper Baby (4 pages)
  • Book of fun 1: George and Harold's College o' Art 1 and 2 (15 pages) and Hairy Potty and the Underwear of Justice (32 pages)
  • Book of fun 2; The Night of the Terror of the Revenge of the Curse of the Bride of Hairy Potty (54 pages)

Recurring Jokes and Themes

  • George and Harold often break the fourth wall in the books. The characters in the series know that they are created by an author. For example the line ""Enough with the description, already! You're making us all sick!', yelled George to the narrator."
  • The last phrase of a chapter has the answer as the title of the next chapter. (Example: Mr. Krupp says "Where, oh where?"; the title of the next chapter is "Here, oh here")
  • Every book has a chapter with just a few words and one page, titled "To Make a Long Story Short". "It did" is the usual phrase in the chapter. The eighth book bent this a little, making two chapters on it, the first being the usual, and the second being entitled "To Make A Longer Story Even Shorter"
  • Every book begins with "George and Harold" as the first chapter, with George and Harold switching a sign around to make a funny phrase. The only one that bent this pattern was Captain Underpants and the Big, Bad Battle of the Bionic Booger Boy (part 2), which also introduces Melvin Seedly, Mr. Krupp, Sulu, Carl, Trixie, and Frankenbooger, due to the chase. George and Harold still switch a sign around. Oddly enough, the eighth book did not include introductions of Sulu and Crackers.
  • Every book has two comics, one at the beginning (an intro) and one in the middle (for humor, and someone often complains about it afterwards), the exceptions are book 5 where George and Harold create a third comic to save the world and book 8 where the evil twins of George and Harold created a third comic.
  • There is a little boy who, after seeing a fight between Captain Underpants and the book's villain, says something like, "Mommy, I just saw a guy in his underwear fighting someone!", to which the mother denies it by saying something like, "Don't be silly." She is often seen reading something even more unbelievable, such as a book about how to lose 20 pounds in 3 days. In fact, in book 4, the boy notices Professor Poopypants climbing into the then-giant Gerbil Jogger 2000. His mother then sarcastically asks if the next event will be the giant robot fighting a giant in his underpants in the middle of the city. Later on in the book, the boy sees Poopypants and Captain Underpants fighting each other, just as his mother predicted: "Mommy?" "Yes?" "Um, never mind."
  • Every book has a chapter known as "The Incredibly Graphic Violence Chapter", which has an animation mode known as Flip-o-Rama or "The Cheesy Animation Technique". It begins with a silly warning about how the "violence" might be offending, instructions on how to work Flip-o-Rama by flipping one page back and forth, and then one to three groups of pages that you flip back and forth. Instead of a violence chapter, book 7 includes instructions on how to do the Underpants Dance. However, book 8 did not include a silly warning on the first page of a flip-o-rama chapter.
  • At the end of Chapter 1 in every book the last line is "But before I can tell you that story I have to tell you THIS story", reverting to another sub-plot story that often ties into the main-plot.
  • There is occasional meta-humor, the most common joke being a character declaring something only happening in poorly written children's stories, usually right before the actual event happening.
  • There is often a mention of things that happened in previous books (usually in the background). Like in the fourth book when Professor Poopypants was at the cafe, the newspaper he was reading said that NASA discovered robots living on Uranus (at the end of the second book the heroes told Robo-Plunger to take the evil toilets to that planet). In the fifth book they make numerous references to the previous books, like when Harold says that the stuff that fell on Ms. Ribble was the alien juice from the third book George asks "you mean the one with the annoyingly long title?".
  • In the George and Harold's comics, the gym teacher is usually attacked somehow by the antagonist (and the principal doesn't seem to care).

World Savers

Starting with Book 2, someone other than Captain Underpants saves the day. The following is a list of the world savers.

  • Book 1: Captain Underpants/George & Harold
  • Book 2: Robo-Plunger
  • Book 3: Captain Underpants/George & Harold
  • Book 4: Captain Underpants
  • Book 5: Captain Underpants/George & Harold
  • Book 6: Sulu the Bionic Hamster
  • Book 7: Captain Underpants
  • Book 8: Boxer Boy & Great Granny Girdle/ George & Harold
  • Book o'Fun: Captain Underpants
  • Book o'Fun 2: Captain Underpants
  • Super Diaper Baby Book 1: Super Diaper Baby & Diaper Dog

ALA list of banned books

The Captain Underpants books were reported by the American Library Association to be the sixth most frequently challenged books in the year 2002. David "Dav" Pilkey also mentioned this in his website. According to the American Library Assciation, Pilkey's Captain Underpants series was banned for insensitivity and being unsuited to age group, as well as encouraging children to disobey authority.

Distribution outside of the USA

  • Japan: Tokuma Shoten
  • Spain: Ediciones SM, Madrid
  • Portugal: Gradiva
  • Brazil: Cosac & Naify
  • Finland: Tammi
  • Indonesia: Gramedia
  • Italy: Piemme (Captain Underpants), Salani (Super Diaper Baby)
  • Sweden: Egmont Richters
  • Poland: Egmont
  • Chinese Traditional: Commonwealth
  • Chinese Simplified: Thinkingdom/New Buds
  • Czech: Egmont
  • Danish: Forlaget Sesam, a division of Egmont
  • France: Le Petit Musc, a division of Playbac, Paris
  • Greek: Modern Times
  • Iceland: JPV Forlag
  • Norway: A.W. Damm
  • Romania: Editura National
  • Russia: Machinyi Tvorenyia Publishing
  • Thai: Pearl Publishing
  • Catalan: Editorial Cruilla, a division of Ediciones SM, Barcelona
  • German: Ueberreuter, Vienna
  • Slovene: Zalozba Mladinska Knjiga
  • Turkish: A.I. Iletisim/Altin Kitaplar
  • Canada, Argentina, Mexico, UK, Hong Kong, India, Australia, New Zealand: Scholastic
  • Ireland,Dublin(CaptainUnderpants)


References

  1. ^ http://pilkey.com/int4.php, August 27 2007. Accessed August 27 2007.
  2. ^ http://pilkey.com/int3.php, August 28 2007. Accessed August 28 2007.
  3. ^ http://www.scholastic.com/captainunderpants/grownups/developmental.htm, August 27 2007. Accessed August 27 2007.
  4. ^ http://pilkey.com/bookview.php?id=3, August 27 2007. Accesssed August 27 2007.
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