Attack of the Mutant Underwear

At a new school where no one knows him, Cody Lee Carson has resolved to become cool—but as it turns out, that may be harder than he thought

Cody Lee Carson is a changed man. When his parents move him to Benton, Oregon, for his fifth grade year, Cody is determined to stop being his boring, bozo-brained old self and start being the supercool, supersmart, superawesome guy he knows he can be—especially since no one in Benton knows about the incident in fourth grade when his pants fell down during a school play and everyone saw his Tweety Bird underwear. And Cody’s plan works! His new teacher loves him, he gets in the top reading group, and the prettiest girl in class wants to be his friend. It seems like everything is going Cody’s way.

But when the old, bozo-brained Cody starts slipping out, will he lose everything he’s worked for? Becoming cool was easy, but staying cool is a little more difficult.

“This lively and believable record of Cody’s attempt to put his best foot forward and figure out where he fits in has great appeal for middle graders who are themselves experiencing the awful awkwardnesses of preadolescence, reinventions of self, science fairs, and fallings-out with friends. With its ever-so-catchy title and its many practical jokes (appropriate for a protagonist with an April 1st birthday), it’s a sort of male companion for Phyllis Reynolds Naylor’s early Alice (Atheneum) and Boys/Girls battle books (Delacorte). A well-paced, positive, and pleasant read.” —School Library Journal
 
“Birdseye uses the diary format to good advantage, showing in funny, first-person observations that boys have the same emotional ups and downs that girls do.” —Booklist

As a kid, Tom Birdseye was decidedly uninterested in writing—or any academic aspect of school, for that matter—never imagining that he would eventually become a published author. And yet, nineteen titles later—novels, picture books, and nonfiction—that is exactly what has happened. His work has been recognized for its excellence by the International Reading Association, Children’s Book Council, National Council of Social Studies, Society of School Librarians International, Oregon Library Association, and Oregon Reading Association, among others. Combined, his books have either won or been finalists for state children’s choice awards forty-three times. Life, it seems, is full of who’d-a-thought-its. He lives and writes in Corvallis, Oregon, but launches mountaineering expeditions to his beloved Cascades on a regular basis.