Author: Rob Harrell
Illustrator: Rob Harrell
© Date: 2021
Publisher: Dial Books for Young Readers
Pages: 235
Chapters: Yes
Illustrations: Yes, graphic novel
Publisher Recommended Age: 7 years and up
Bonus Activities at End of Book: No
Summary from Book: Look up at the sky-who is that daring hero floating by? It’s…Batpig!
He’s saving (well, okay, slightly improving) the world by catching litterers and stopping people from saying bad words. But soon this superswine will face his biggest challenges ever: A giant lizard bend on destruction and a butcher with visions of world domination!
Can Gary the pig keep his secret and save the day without losing his friends?
Page Pig Thoughts: This one was ridiculous in a fun way. I smiled as I followed the origin story, but the part with the Butcher supervillain was a little hit and miss for me. I particularly enjoyed the potty mouthed reptile villain who used phrases such as doo-doo and toilet brushes. I would read another.
Family Unit: Gary lives with his mother and father. His younger cousin, Mervin, lives down the hall in the apartment building.
Conflict/Social Issues:
- Gary wants to keep his Batpig identity secret, but he kept getting found out.
- Gary and Brook trying out super powers in secret makes Carl feel like they don’t like him anymore. Carl even debates becoming a supervillain.
Positive Items:
- Gary is able to save the city with a little help from his friends.
- Gary’s friends help him go out and save the city. They even baby-sit Mervin so that Gary can get out of the apartment.
- Batpig is the star, but everyone contributes to saving the day, even annoying cousin Mervin.
Items of Interest:
- Gary’s friends are Brook the bat and Carl the fish.
- Brook the bat has a fear of heights. She manages to overcome her fear when needed to help save her friends. She helps save Gary/Batpig more than once.
- Carl moves around on land, but has to hydrate periodically. He hydrates by soaking in toilets for a bit.
- Gary gets accidentally bitten by his bat friend Brook. Turns out Brook was radioactive, but it had never come up in conversation before. Gary gets superhero powers, he keeps discovering more as the story goes on.
- Gary and Brook initially try to keep the superpower thing to themselves because their other friend, Carl, is terrible at keeping secrets. When they realize that they are not being good friends to Carl, they make it up to him. Turns out that he actually could keep that secret. He even embarrassed himself in front of the pretty, popular girl at school that he has a crush on just to keep the secret.
- The first villain that Gary battles is the potty mouth Repto-Man. Carl’s pet lizard gets soaked in nacho cheese fish flake tainted pig soda and morphs into the villain. Turns out cool ranch fish flakes in pig soda counteracts nacho cheese fish flakes in pig soda. So after a whole thing with Batpig strapped to a rocket and vomiting out a poison pill, Repto-Man is turned back to his usual pet lizard form.
- A picture of a pig with where different cuts of meat come from is shown.
- The smell of bacon is Gary’s kryptonite. He needs to rescue Mervin and Carl from The Butcher. Gary comes up with a plan that Brook helps with. They chew a whole bunch of gum and stuff it in Gary’s nose so that he cannot smell the bacon. There is a note not to attempt sticking gum in your nose at home, but some kids are impressionable…
- Gary gets help from Brook and Mervin to escape The Butcher and save the day.
- Mervin winds up helping save the day to escape The Butcher by using his superpower of sorts, annoying complaining very loudly.
- The Butcher created a blanket robot that wraps everything in pig-in-a-blanket dough. The robot is sad that it just can’t help itself from blanketing everything, which makes it seem evil. Gary sits down and has a nice conversation with the robot to make it feel better. Then Gary takes the robot to use its blanketing skills at the “vegetarian pigs-in-a-blanket” factory.
- Gary keeps his Batpig identity secret from his parents so he won’t be grounded forever. He negotiates a deal with Mervin to keep him quiet and attempt to prevent Mervin from becoming his sidekick.
Other Books in Series (At Time of Posting):
- Book 2 – Batpig: Too Pig to Fail
- Book 3 – Batpig: Go Pig or Go Home