Almost Super
By: Marion Jensen
My Rating: FIVE OUT OF FIVE STARS
Best for: All Ages

Super in every way!

It’s this reading dad’s favorite time of the school year, when our school district picks a book and gifts a copy to each family with students in grades K-4. They provide a reading schedule, and our entire community reads it together as families. It’s the best!

We’ve had some great ones: The One and Only Ivan, Charlotte’s Web, Bob…we’ve collected quite a few across 6 kids and many years in elementary school. The kids and I agree, this year’s book was one of the most fun we’ve ever read together! Almost Super by Marion Jensen was a WIN!

What a fun and funny story! We laughed AND we cheered–and then we laughed some more. Almost Super is a perfect family read-aloud.

I’ll set the stage…

Rafter Baily and his brother Benny have been impatiently waiting for exactly 4:23 pm on the leap day after they turn 12–it’s the exact moment each member of the Baily family gets their superpower. Grandpa has super strength. Dad can fly. Mom is telekinetic. Their brother is super smart. Their aunts and uncles and cousins can shrink, have super speed, or can turn invisible. Rafter and Baily can’t wait to join the fight against their archenemies supervillains: The Johnsons!

But what power will they get?!

The moment arrives, and their powers are–well–duds. Rafter suddenly has the power to light a match on polyester. Benny gains the power to turn his innie belly button into and outie! How is Rafter going to face Juanita Johnson–his personal nemeses–at school?! She’s going to have received her new supervillain power the same time as them!

That sets up the most fun, laugh-out-loud story my kids and I have read together in a long time. Every time the Bailey’s talk about the Johnsons, they shake their fist–and we all shook our fists right along with them. Each time Benny triggered his belly button power it made a tiny “pop” sound, and we all stopped to laugh. Sometimes we’d re-read lines multiple times just to make ourselves crack up. We loved it so much, as soon as we finished we downloaded book 2, Searching for Super, and immediately started working on it together.

Way to go Marion Jensen! Write more books please!

No content concerns, but be ready to laugh at the silliness and have fun trying to guess what happens next!

We highly recommend Almost Super for all ages and independent readers ready for a 250-page chapter book.

Happy Reading!