JUNIE B. isn’t the only one who doesn’t speak the queen’s English: Dav Pilkey is a best-selling author who misspells words in his books.
But the creator of the wildly popular “Captain Underpants” series – about a pair of pals, George and Harold, who create a superhero comic book and then turn their mean principal, Mr. Krupp, into that superhero with their $2.99 3-D Hypno Ring – has good reason:
“Kids become frozen up by their fear or making a mistake,” he says.
“I wanted to show them that George and Harold don’t worry about making mistakes or misspellings.”
Fresh on the heels of the release of a “collectors’ edition” of the first adventure (complete with a cool CD of goofy Underpants-themed, secret-agent-style songs), Pilkey admits, “I was a kid who hated to read.
“When I became a writer, I tried to make the kind of books I would’ve wanted to read.”
Now 39 and living in Seattle, Pilkey says he was the class clown – “the undisputed king of funny noises” – so disruptive that he was frequently sent into the hallway, desk and all. It was there that the young Pilkey started drawing what became, 8½ years ago, the Captain Underpants series.
Thirty-eight million copies of his books later, Pilkey loves being greeted by kids, who show him their handmade comics.
As for the next tighty-whitey adventure, Pilkey says it’s called “Captain Underpants and the Preposterous Plight of the Purple Potty People.”