Timothy and the Strong Pajamas

Timothy and the Strong Pajamas by Viviane Schwarz There is a stage in the preschool years when many children become obsessed with superheroes. What three or four-year-old doesn’t long for the power to fly and to beat bad guys ten times his or her size? Yet good books for this age on the topic are surprisingly difficult to find. Poorly written easy reader books based on big budget films inappropriate for the age abound, as do picture books of similar quality but much denser text-per-page levels. Even using my librarian-fu on the catalog has had very limited success. I have seen a few good books (and alas, not written them down!), but here is a good recent entry:

Timothy Smallbeast, a young boy of indeterminate species, is not a superhero. But he really wishes he was! When his mother fixes his favorite pajamas, he finds that they make him superstrong. He promptly goes out and saves scads of people with his new powers, before disaster strikes and he finds that his powers have deserted him in his hour of need. There are picture books that I would buy for adults; this is not one of them. However, for parents who want a good story for their superhero-loving young fry, one that won’t instill in their offspring a desire to see R-rated movies, one that parents can read several times in a row without getting sick of, Timothy and the Strong Pajamas fits the bill just perfectly.