Guardian of Earth Shell Shocker

Gr 2—4—These chapter-book adaptations of popular comic superheroes have great, full-page illustrations, and the onomatopoeia is displayed graphically as in the old Adam West "Batman" episodes. The covers are 3-D holograms that will attract kids. In the first book, Hal Jordan is a test pilot, flying 41,000 feet above the earth when a green flash shoots past him. All of the controls on his plane die out and the jet begins a hasty descent. Before it hits, it is surrounded by a strange green light that stops the impact and pulls him into the desert where he finds an alien spaceship that has crashed. The alien gives Hal a green ring and tells him that he is now part of the Green Lantern Corps. In Shell Shocker, Barry is Central City's top police scientist, but nobody knows his hidden identity as the Flash, the fastest man alive. When someone plants a bomb in the police station, he has only 10 minutes to disarm it when he finds out that the Top, an evil villain, is wreaking havoc in an observatory, the city dam is about to break, and a building is about to fall on a school full of children. This is no problem for the Flash though. Action-packed titles for fans of these superheroes.—Erik Carlson, White Plains Public Library, NY