CAPTAIN NOBODY by Dean Pitchford

ife can be difficult at 10 years old. You’re not old enough for anyone to take you seriously, and you’re
just beginning to combat the hormone jungle. It also doesn’t help if your high school-aged brother is
the star quarterback of the local football team, your family is so busy they tend to rely on you for
everything, and you have the mysterious power of blending into the background at school so that no
one notices you. Indeed, life can be hard when you’re a nobody.

Newton Newman, or Newt, isn’t prepared for what happens next. His football-star older brother,
Chris, is critically injured during the last play of the biggest game of the year and is unexpectedly
struck into a coma. While the prognosis is positive, it’s also a bit mysterious: Chris’s vital signs are
excellent; he’s just not waking up. Newt’s parents start spending all their time at the hospital, leave
Newt at home, and forget to help him prepare for one of the most important holidays of the year ---
Halloween. Cecil and JJ, Newt’s friends, try and take his mind off of Chris’s situation by challenging
Newt to come up with a new and original costume.

With all of the pressures from school, home and the hospital, Newt waits until the last second and
scrapes together a less-than-impressive costume. He takes some of Chris’s hand-me-downs, track
pants and an old football jersey, throws them together along with a mask cut out from one of Chris’s
old shirts, and attempts to become a superhero. Not until the middle of trick-or-treating does Newt
realize who he is --- Captain Nobody! Slowly, Newt begins to transform into a hero who stands up for
all the quiet kids and all other children who people tend to forget about.

While Newt intended for Captain Nobody to exist only one night, circumstances beyond his control
force him to dress like Captain Nobody on a daily basis. The effect is magic. Not only do kids in
Newt’s class pay him a little more attention and respect, Captain Nobody manages to save the day on
more than one occasion. If Newt is able to defeat common-class criminals, assist old men and stop
traffic with a single glance, then surely he must be able to do something to help Chris. Time is
running out, though, and this might be too big of a job --- even for someone as powerful as Captain
Nobody!

Captain Nobody is a hero anyone can root for. Dean Pitchford manages to take an everyday kid
facing extraordinary circumstances and turn him into a likable, realistic hero who you could find
running down the street to save a lost kitten. The situations that Newt finds himself in as Captain
Nobody are downright hilarious yet believable. I can still recall some of my fourth-grade days with
fondness, but I didn’t have nearly as much fun as Newt. Like any good superhero, Captain Nobody
inspires kids of all ages not to be afraid to stand up for what is right and to kick some butt at the
same time!

1. Newton Newman worries that his parents named him after a cookie -- a fig newton. His
father insists that they actually named him after Sir Isaac Newton, the great scientist who
discovered gravity. Do you ever wish that your parents had named you something different?
If you could pick your own name now, what would you call yourself? Why? 2. Newt first
taught himself to draw cartoons by tracing the pictures in his older brother’s collection of
comic books. Do you have a skill that you have taught yourself? If you could acquire any
new ability -- artistic, athletic, scholastic, whatever! -- what would that be? 3. Newt’s brother
Chris is a very busy guy. So are his mom and his dad. His entire family always seems to be
running circles around Newt, and he winds up feeling forgotten. Do the members of your
family ever get so busy and distracted that that you wind up feeling neglected? 4. Cecil and
JJ, Newt’s best friends, have very different interests. Do you remember what they are? 5.
Newt seems to be as curious about Cecil’s and JJ’s interests as they are about his. Have you
got friends with hobbies or skills that you find especially interesting? 6. When Newt gets
tossed out of the stadium, he watches the second half of the Big Game from behind a fence at
one end of the field; that gives him a brand new perspective on the game and enables him to
experience it in much the same way as his older brother, Chris. Do you ever watch a sport --
in person or on television -- and imagine what it would be like to be actually doing it? Which
sport -- when you watch it -- makes you want to take part in it? And remember: the sport
doesn’t only have to be a game; it could be a sport like autoracing or snow-skiing or
parachuting. 7. Cecil, JJ and Newt decide that they’re going to build their own Halloween
costumes so that they can celebrate their inner other. If you could wear anything and be
anyone - anyone at all! - how would you dress for Halloween? 8. After Chris is taken to the
hospital, Newt tries to help out around the house by making breakfast and taking phone
messages. When someone in your family gets sick, what can you do -- or what have you done
-- to help out while they got better? 9. The first day that Newt shows up at school dressed at
Captain Nobody, he gets a lot of different reactions. If one of your classmates came to school
tomorrow looking and dressing differently, how do you think you would react? How would
your classmates and your teacher react? 10. When Newt watches the little video on his dad’s
phone of Chris in his hospital bed, he says that, “my eyes stung and I couldn’t think of
anything to say.” What do you imagine Newt was feeling at that moment? 11. It’s pretty
obvious that Chris is a hero in Newt’s eyes, and, by the time the story is over, Chris feels the
same way about Newt. Is there anyone you know -- within or outside your family -- who you
look up to? Why? 12. Newt is afraid of heights; JJ is scared of spiders; and Cecil gets creeped
out by plastic garbage bags. Is there anything unusual that frightens you?
Analysis

Newton Newman is used to being invisible. His parents are forever caught up in work and his
high school football star brother Chris is getting ready for the biggest game of the year. Most
people seem surprised to discover Chris has a ten-year-old kid brother. Newton and his two best
friends, JJ and Cecil, are the most ignored fourth graders at their school. Halloween is just
around the corner and the three friends decide they’ve had enough of hand me down costumes
and going as the same old things. They are going to be noticed. They are going to be who they
really want to be–“their inner selves.”

Newt has no idea what he’s going to do for his costume. He has notebooks filled with villains and
heroes he’s created, but they all have special abilities he can’t mimic, such as turning into wire.
He shelves costume planning to attend the big game between his brother’s Fennimore Ferrets
and the rival Merrimac team. Merrimac’s got the better record in the rivalry between the two
teams, but Chris has given the Ferrets victory against Merrimac before. The game is a battle to
the end, when a long play gives Fennimore a touchdown just in time.

But when the players come off the pile in the end zone, one player is not moving. That player is
Chris. Heart pounding, Newt watches as his brother is loaded into an ambulance, unconscious.
Not allowed to accompany Chris to the hospital, Newt is taken home by neighbors.

When JJ and Cecil arrive to trick or treat, they find Newt wearing half a drawer full of clothes
handed down to him by Chris. Newt had been trying to his mom smile, but she left before she
could see him all dressed up in Chris’s stuff (she had told Newt she missed Chris). JJ and Cecil
help Newt cobble together a hero costume from sweatpants, part of a sweatshirt and a basketball
jersey.

In his costume, Newt doesn’t feel so afraid. He feels confident, as if he actually were a hero.
Pressed to come up with a name while trick or treating, Newt settles on Captain Nobody. In his
costume, he is noticed, not ignored. Discovering the next morning that there are no other clean
clothes in his room, Newt takes Captain Nobody to school.

Other kids stare and sneer. Newt’s teacher is taken aback. When he tells her his name, he ends
up in the principal’s office briefly. The adults are very concerned with how he is acting, thinking
he’s disconnecting after being traumatized by his brother’s injury. They let him keep the costume
on, even addressing him as Captain Nobody, but they also call his parents.

Cecil gets caught up in the whole Captain Nobody thing. He brings walkie-talkies for Newt and
JJ. He has Captain Nobody rescue a bass drum from the top of a huge garbage pile.
Unexpectedly, this incident also gives Newt a chance to help an elderly man with dementia or
Alzheimer’s home.

Captain Nobody has a talent for getting into situations because of his friends or bullies that also
give him a chance to be brave. A mission to help a jewelery store fix the horrible grammar on its
signs ends up giving the jeweler a chance to hit an alarm because a theft was in progress. When
the football team mascot, a real ferret, runs out into the middle of a high way, it is up to Captain
Nobody to rescue it.

I could well relate to parents who wanted to protect a child from a health scare. Newton’s parents
are not telling much about Chris and the feeling of being useless is eating him up inside. He finds
they are ripping out articles in the paper about his brother’s health so he doesn’t worry about
what’s going on. Newt can’t visit Chris because more tests need to be done. How the parents try
to protect Newt is sort of a role reversal in the family.

In many ways, Newt is the caretaker in the family. He took over breakfast duty from his absent
minded mother. He’s the one that reminds her where Halloween is. He remembers all the very
strange places things get filed in his house (housing contracts are in with cereal these days).
Newt is very responsible in some ways, but in others he’s facing a lot of childhood worries and
fears. Whenever anyone asks about Chris, he tells them his brother will be fine because that’s
what he has to believe.

I loved the sibling bond in this book. Chris and Newt had certain rituals, such as how Newt would
wake Chris up in the morning when he had trouble going (watch out for hoses!) and how Chris
always told Newt there were monsters under his bed. I found it rewarding to read a book where
the popular brother has a good relationship with the more overshadowed sibling.

I found this to be an engrossing read and its ending is sweetly done. The friendships felt strong
between the three main kids. While some of the things Captain Nobody ended up doing required
some suspension of belief, it was in keeping with the tone of the book. There are some
interesting explorations of the consequences of rumors in the aftermath of big events. Some of
the circumstances in the book, from the football injury to a brother to the uncertainty of the
hospital to the feeling of being faraway and useless reminded me in some ways of Catherine
Murdock’s YA The Off Season.
Captain Nobody Chapter 1 – 5
Halloween is coming, but Newt, J.J and Cecil’s old Halloween outfit is starting to fall
apart. Cecil chose to dress up as a Music note, and J.J wanted to dress up as Mr.
Motivation. But when it comes to Newts turn to think about who he wants to dress
up, he couldn’t think of anything. He scanned through his notebook of superheroes
but none of them interested him. He kept thinking : I have nobody to dress up as
when Halloween comes, nobody! Then one of the greatest idea popped in his mind,
he’ll be Captain Nobody!