Like Peter Parker, Clark Kent and Bruce Banner before them, an alliteratively named pair of 12-year-old British boys--Rory Rooney and Karol Komissky--one day find themselves unexpectedly "super." Their superpowers coincide with Rory’s "kind of brown" and Karol's "pinkish white" skin turning--also unexpectedly--broccoli green. Rory's superpower is being able to teleport "slightly." Karol (who goes through two name changes in the course of the book) decodes locked doors while sleepwalking like a "spooky Playmobil." The third member of the green team, Koko Kwok, shows up later; she wants to rule the world (she shares her excellent ideas with the prime minister when they're holding him captive).
Fans of Daniel Pinkwater's wacky novels will devour Frank Cottrell Boyce's (Millions, Cosmic) semi-science fiction, somewhat surreal The Astounding Broccoli Boy. In the mix, readers will find a sleepy prince of England and his insomniac baby; escaped gorillas, reindeer and penguins; a borrowed milk truck; and mass urban panic after "alien" sightings. Beneath all the wildly entertaining nonsense, however, is the story of an unlikely friendship formed after the rockiest of starts: "Grim" Komissky (as Rory used to call him behind his back) bullied Rory relentlessly at school before the two of them were thrown together in a hospital isolation ward. And when Grim (by now called Tommy-Lee) says about a hippo roaming the streets of London, "They're probably misunderstood.... Just because they're big, people probably pick on them and ask them to have fights they don't even want," neither Rory nor the author needs to add a thing to underscore the poignant moment. --Emilie Coulter, freelance writer and editor