21 May 2005 Captain Fact and Knowledge by Knife and Packer, Hyperion/Volo

CAPTAIN FACT SPACE ADVENTURE Captain Fact and Knowledge by Knife and Packer, Hyperion/Volo, 102 pages, June 2005, ISBN: 0-7868-5511-8

CAPTAIN FACT DINOSAUR ADVENTURE by Knife and Packer, Hyperion/Volo, 102 pages, June 2005, ISBN: 0-7868-5512-6

Space, dinosaurs, bugs, mummies, and bodily functions. What topics could be more fascinating to guys when we're eight or nine or ten years old?

A couple of nights ago, I ran into friends at Pine Crest, our district's school for third through fifth graders. We were attending the annual Open House, looking through student portfolios, admiring art projects, and checking out photos from the Civil War enactment that took place earlier in the year during the class field trip to Angel Island.

When I asked what their son was currently enjoying reading, they told me that he actually wasn't much of a reader and hadn't been excited about anything since completing a FRINDLE year earlier.

Having offered to try and dig out a few things at home that might interest him, I wandered around the house later, trying to spot Something New for a boy who (our fifth grade daughter confided) "won't stay in his seat" and "turns everything into a gun." In short, a typical male action figure.

UPS to the rescue!

So, yesterday morning I'm sitting around reading a superb YA novel that I'll be reviewing soon, and the guy with the brown suit and the brown truck bounces up our long, bumpy driveway and drops off a thin package with the perfect new books for my friends' son.

One hundred pages per episode, a cross between the good-hearted cartoon wackiness of CAPTAIN UNDERPANTS (Dav Pilkey is an absolute god at Pine Crest.) and the informationality of THE MAGIC TREE HOUSE, CAPTAIN FACT is about to become the latest version of the British Invasion.

Cliff Thornhill is the world's worst TV weatherman. His sidekick Puddles is the world's only TV weatherdog. They have an incredibly overbearing boss who is always getting on their case for screwing up the weather report once again.

But then:

"As they returned to their office after meeting with the Boss, Cliff and Puddles noticed a huge crowd gathered around a TV screen.

" 'There's a monkey on a collision course with Mars!' gasped Lucy, Cliff's friend from the Makeup department.

" 'A monkey in space?' Cliff asked.

" 'It's not just any monkey,' explained Lucy. 'That's Dr. Barnabas, the world's most intelligent primate. He's on a mission to explore Mars, and his spaceship, Ape-ollo 13, has been damaged. He's down to his last two bananas. He can't last much longer!'

"Before Lucy could even finish her sentence, Cliff and Puddles had taken off.

"Strange, thought Lucy. Cliff and Puddles always seem to disappear whenever there's a crisis..."

They pull the lever, the portrait of Cliff's great-great-great uncle Sir Phineas Thornhill slides back revealing the secret tunnel, and the pair slide down a pole into the Fact Cave, where they transform into Captain Fact and Knowledge. Their paraphernalia is created by a guy named Professor Minuscule, whose young whiz-kid daughter, Factorella, is the unsung hero in the first adventure.

As the adventures progress, Captain Fact regularly has one of a variety of sudden bodily complaints ("nose began to twitch," "head began to throb," "earlobes began to wobble") that inevitably lead to a "Fact Attack": a two page spread of cartoon-illustrated facts about an aspect of their mission.

In checking out the Captain and his creators online, I discovered that there are already five episodes in print in Britain (encompassing the aforementioned topics). I also found a synopsis which elaborates on the gadget aspect:

"His Fact Gun can fire off a thousand facts per minute. His Factmobile can fly, swim, burrow through mountains all in the name of facts. Not only that, he's got Fact Chewing Gum, Fact Cream and he can make a mean Fact Sandwich."

In each of the first two episodes we also learn important secret facts about the genesis of Captain Fact and Knowledge.

Fact: guys (and probably some girls, too) are going to love reading and sharing the adventures of Captain Fact.

Richie Partington

http://richiespicks.com

BudNotBuddy@aol.com