Wednesday's for Kids XXVIII -- THE ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN UNDERPANTS, by Dav Pilkey

Do you doubt it?  Maybe it's one of those you-had-to-be-there kind of moments, like you can't really get it unless you're reading it on the family room floor with two little kids who think that all it takes to make something hilarious is to add the words fart, poop, or underwear.  And that's not even what makes this book work!  It is, quite simply, a brilliant and absolutely hilarious fantasy-- "modern fairy-tale" --of nearly every grade school kid in the world brought perfectly to paper.

Best friends and fourth graders, George and Harold, are classic class clowns and the bane of their hapless principal, Mr. Krupp.  In desperation the man installs hidden surveillance cameras and finally catches them red-handed pranking the cheerleaders and football team with itching powder and who-knows what else, and he hauls the culprits to his office to deliver sentence.  Instead of suspending them or following other school protocol, however, he opts for revenge and, counting on the little kids' fear of the gigantic football players, threatens to show the team the surveillance footage if they don't do just what he says.  After "four to six" weeks of cleaning the man's house, washing his car, mowing his lawn, and whatever else I don't even remember--feeding him grapes while the other fans him with banana leaves or something--their Hail Mary, a 3-D Hypno-Ring, finally arrives in the mail, and all you-know-what ensues when they take it to his office (called in after failing to show up at his home first thing in the morning to make him breakfast or something) and try it out.

Of course, the 2-dollar ring works exactly as advertised, and Principal Krupp, mystically changed by the power of hypnosis, strips to his tighty-whities, throws a curtain around his shoulders, and defenestrates himself from the school office in the noble names of Peace and Justice and by authority of his terrible new gift, Wedgie Power.  And that's just the beginning!

Now go ahead: tell me this isn't brilliant!