Batman #1: Time Thaw

If you can find this book, GRAB it fast! Of all the books in this series, we think this one is the best! Batman has to fight Mr. Freeze in this chapter book, when Mr. Freeze decides that all of Gotham should be frozen. So, Batman lands the Batplane on Freeze's fog factory, falls inside where he is greeted by the villainous doctor. After spilling the beans of his plan, Freeze escapes on his missile machine, leaving Batman to fight with his tigers. After Batman tosses them a sleeping gas capsule, he escapes back to the roof to his Batplane only to discover that Freeze has frozen his plane's engines! No worries - Batman just jumps into the cockpit, straps on his Batglider, pushes a button and he's ejected into the sky on his glider. When he lands in Gotham City, he rides a prehistoric mammoth into town that Freeze has unfrozen, and takes Freeze down. This one is a true page-turner, full of action and excitement! It was very well written, and this guy definitely needs to be writing more stories! Batman looks as if he's training under Schwartzneggar's authority - definitely drank his milk as a kid. He's drawn to look very muscular, bound to save the world. Great, great, great story, we just cannot recommend it enough! Highly recommend!

Close your eyes, open this book at random to any page and let your finger drop. It is certain to land on a perfect jewel of testosterone-drenched boy-language. Or, if you miss the text, your finger will land on an illustration deserving of scrutiny. I teach lower-elementary school (1-3 grade) and I cannot keep this book in the classroom lending library. It is the most motivating book I have ever found for reluctant male readers at the early-fluency level. I plan to buy three more copies and search to find any other books by the same writer. And in case anyone is thinking I'm sexist, I promise I DO steer all the children in my class to all types of books. But this particular text almost always goes home with an excited little boy.

My son, a huge Batman fan, loves this and other books from this series ("Time Thaw" is the first of the series, though I have not noticed any reason to read them in sequence) and features the villain, Mr. Freeze, with a diabolical plot to send Gotham City into the Ice Age! Please note that this is NOT a comic book! The artwork appears to have been lifted from a comic book, complete with dialog balloons and sound effects, but the story is told in chapters in regular story format. Each chapter is about four pages long, and the final page (40) is devoted to vocabulary words. Also note that this is Batman only, no Robin. A fun way to get kids into reading!