A rollicking superhero adventure with heart, humor, and plenty of emotional pull.
Bowler’s second installment in the Adventures of Muppit Boy series is a spirited, thoughtful superhero adventure that pairs comic-book thrills with an unusually compassionate look at boys who struggle to fit into conventional expectations. Elmo “Mo” Fitzroy, known worldwide as Muppit Boy, has a secret: nanotechnology has transformed him into the superpowered Condor Kid. While Mo struggles to master flying and keep his new identity hidden from his sharp-eyed friends, athletic, high-energy boys are mysteriously disappearing. When Mo and his mentor Ari are assigned to investigate, the case leads to a bizarre scheme exploiting the very qualities that have caused these boys to be labelled troublesome. Mo soon discovers that solving the mystery may require help from the person he least expects.
Bowler has considerable fun with the superhero setup. Mo possesses extraordinary strength and speed, but he remains an insecure, self-conscious kid who worries about his appearance, his friendships, and whether he can keep his increasingly complicated double life from falling apart. His lively first-person narration, full of jokes, embarrassment, and impulsive observations, keeps even the novel’s more serious passages accessible.
The mystery surrounding the missing boys gives the story urgency, but Bowler is most interested in why they disappeared in the first place. Many are athletic, competitive, restless kids who have been labelled ADHD, ODD, class clowns, or chronic troublemakers. Rather than reducing them to those labels, Bowler asks what happens when schools and adults concentrate on controlling children instead of discovering where their abilities might flourish. The novel’s most effective speculative element transforms that question into something literal and sinister: youthful energy becomes a resource that adults can exploit.
Equally compelling is Mo’s evolving relationship with Mason Rizzo, the athletic bully who once made his life miserable. Bowler avoids an overly tidy transformation, gradually revealing the insecurity beneath Rizzo’s swagger. Their uneasy connection deepens the novel’s exploration of masculinity, forgiveness, and the difference between looking strong and possessing genuine courage. The brisk prose, humorous dialogue, secret identities, high-tech gadgetry, daring rescues, and larger-than-life villainy keep the adventure moving, while Mo’s emotional vulnerability supplies its heart. Beneath the superhero spectacle is an affirming argument for seeing children as individuals rather than problems to be corrected.
Fans of Gordon Korman’s Ungifted and Stuart Gibbs’s Spy School will be right at home in this fast-paced, bighearted superhero romp.
***
Pub date October 20, 2026
ISBN 979-8993648668
Print length 201 Pages
Price $4.99 Kindle edition
