DC Super-Pets!: Royal Rodent Rescue

Royal Rodent Rescue by John Sazaklis. Illustrated by Art Baltazar. (Canada) - (US)
DC Super-Pets! series

Pages: 52
Ages: 6+
Finished: Mar. 30, 2011
First Published: Jan. 1, 2011
Publisher: Picture Window Books
Genre: Easy Reader, Superheroes
Rating: 4/5

First sentence:

High above the city of Metropolis, Streaky the Super-Cat zoomed through the air.

Acquired: Received a review copy from Capstone Publishing.

Reason for Reading: Ds read aloud to me for his reader.

This new series "DC Super-Pets!" is a younger sibling to the already established "DC Super Heroes" series by the publisher. While the latter series is for established, and perhaps reluctant readers, this new series is for emergent or reluctant readers. All six books in the series are at a GR. 2 level with this one being at an RL of 2:8. Following the same format as the established series, DC Super Pets uses colourful cartoon graphics for all the sound effect words. It goes on to make the books more appealing to younger readers by using different colours of text for each character's spoken words. There are also illustrations on every page, using a variety of formats from full-page to half-page to single illustrations amongst the text. This may sound crowded at first but the lines of text are double spaced creating a nice graphic display, easily read on each page.

This story features Super Girl's pet cat, Squeaky, who through an experiment accidentally acquired all of Super Girl's abilities and thus is called Super Cat, Cat of Steel by his peers. It also features Catwoman's pet, obviously a cat, but not just any cat, a Siamese cat named Rozz who has no superpowers but is extremely sly, quick footed and has all the talents of a cat burglar. Rozz sees on the TV News that Super Girl and Bat Girl are fighting a monster robot. Living in Gotham City, she doesn't travel much and had never heard of Metropolis before so she decides to take off for the beautiful clean city to cause some havoc. She finds that immediately upon her arrival, the King and Queen of Kardamyla have also arrived in town and are staying at a hotel. With them is their precious pet, Prince Zouli, a hamster. Rozz decides that kidnapping Zouli will make for a handsome ransom reward. Eventually Super-Cat and Rozz will have to battle it out.

Ds has a hard time reading these books. He is a struggling reader but I helped him along as needed with the reading so that he wouldn't reach frustration level as he loves this series of books! He can't wait to read the next one! He loved the action and the characters. So far of the two books he's read, he is preferring the villains over the superheroes. He just loved the sly and sneaky Rozz. He also enjoys the page at the back that shows all the super-hero pets on one page and all the villain pets on the back. Then looking for the ones he's met so far. He only wishes this page also told him who the owner of each pet was.

Capstone's books always bring out enthusiasm for the story and reading in general in my son. Even though he struggled with the reading, my guidance at balancing his effort without it becoming frustration, along with his eagerness to read the captivating story brought about a pleasurable reading experience and he's looking forward to reading another book in the series.