SuperZero (school edition)

By Darrel Bristow-Bovey

Zed is just an ordinary boy living an ordinary life when one day he discovers a secret box, long-hidden, crammed with clues and secrets that might just change his life forever.

This school edition of SuperZero is included in the Department of Basic Education’s National Catalogue for Senior Phase learners. It has been revised and updated with activities for pre-reading and post-reading, questions according to cognitive levels, glossaries and notes on the genre of the novel. Memoranda available online at www.tafelberg.com.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tafelberg
• Release date: Oct 30, 2006
• ISBN: 9780624065845

Darrel Bristow-Bovey

Darrel Bristow-Bovey was born in Durban in the 1970s and lost his father when he was twelve. He studied English literature under J.M. Coetzee and André P. Brink at the University of Cape Town, and three years after leaving university set himself up a as a freelance writer with weekly columns in The Sunday Independent, Business Day and Cape Times, as well as several monthly columns. He won the Mondi prize for best South African columnist four years in succession. In 2002 he was a prize-winner at the SAB Sportswriter of the Year Awards, and he has also been a prize-winner in the Africa-Geographic Travel Writing Competition for the past three years running. His first book, I Moved Your Cheese, was translated into four languages and sold all around the world, most notably Brazil (in Portuguese translation) and India, where it topped the English best-seller lists for several months. His second book, The Naked Bachelor, was a chart-topper in Singapore. In 2005 Darrel switched to screenwriting, having written extensively for SABC3's Hard Copy and The Lab. He also co-wrote a comedy show with comic John Vlismas. SuperZero is Darrel’s first full-length novel for young readers, and he says: "Writing for children is a lot more difficult than writing for adults, and more satisfying if you get it right, because young readers have far firmer (and I think far more admirable) ideas about what's important when they read than we adults do.”

Book preview

SuperZero

School Edition

Darrel Bristow-Bovey

Tafelberg

Before reading

1. You can’t spell zero without a Zed

When Zed first realised he was a superhero, he was surprised.

He’d never much felt like a superhero. He’d never done anything especially superheroic, except maybe that time last year when he was goalie for the Wentville Primary School Under 12s against Bighton Primary and he’d saved a penalty taken by Daniel Dundee, who was as big as a gorilla and had a head like a flowerpot and everyone said he should be playing under 16, he was so big. That was impressive, but it wasn’t exactly saving the world.

Anyway, Zed’s friend Katey always reminded him, that was by accident. You just shut your eyes and fell over, and your face happened to be in the way of the ball.

It was true. All that next week kids at school slapped him on the back and asked him about the save, but he never spoke about it. He didn’t want anyone to guess how lucky he’d been.

Zed wasn’t normally lucky, or at least not with good luck. Normally he had the worst luck of anyone in the history of the world. If anyone was going to bump over a pot of glue and then step in it so that his shoes made a sticky, sucky sound when he walked, it would be Zed. If anyone was going to staple a piece of paper to his thumb or have his hair cut on the day the barber was in a bad mood, it would be Zed.

Maybe all people have the same amount of bad luck in their lives, he once said to Katey, and when I grow up my life will be easy because I’m getting all the bad luck out of the way now.

Maybe, she’d said, in a kind sort of way. Katey was always kind.

Zed had always felt different from other kids, and not just because he was a little bit shorter than everyone else, and a little bit skinnier, and he looked a little bit different, and his hair seemed to grow in ways no one else’s did and never seemed to lie down and behave itself when he brushed it.

Other kids seemed to get along better than he could: they found the same things interesting and knew what to say to each other. When he tried to talk to them, he seemed as if he was speaking a slightly different language, or as if he was an alien who’d only just learnt human ways before beaming down, and who kept getting bits of it not quite right.

He could talk to Katey, but they’d been friends almost as long as they’d been alive. But even Katey would sometimes say: Zed, you are the strangest person I know.

But still – being different didn’t necessarily mean he was a superhero. It was only after a sudden, unexpected adventure, from which he just barely escaped with his life, that it all began to fall into place.

After reading

Before reading

2. The box of secrets

One afternoon Zed was poking around the garage. In the side where his father’s car used to be parked there was a great clutter of boxes and trunks and plastic packets stuffed with his dad’s old things. Zed liked poking through it, not looking for anything in particular, but because it was nice to go through his dad’s old things.

On this day he pushed aside a pile of yellow plastic packets filled with handkerchiefs and ties, and there against the wall was a large wooden box he’d never seen before.

It was nearly as long as he was, painted pale blue, with rusted metal hinges. The lid creaked and coughed and puffed dust and cobwebs. A curious smell wafted out – a smell of wood and powder and … a dry smell, like sunlight.

Zed peered nervously inside and saw … comics! Hundreds, maybe thousands of them, all jumbled and higgledy-piggledy. They almost filled the box, a sea of comics.

Wow, said Zed.

He sat on his haunches and picked one at random. Spiderman. He checked the date on the cover. January, 1978. 1978! That was long before he was born. But who …?

Zed! Come in! Supper’s ready!

His mom’s face grew serious when she saw him come in reading Spiderman.

Oh. So you’ve found them.

There’s a whole box of them! It’s sort of pale blue …

His mother sighed. Yes, I know, she said. Those were your dad’s.

His mom didn’t talk about his dad very often. He had died when Zed was much younger, and Zed hardly remembered him, just that he was tall, and that he was his dad.

I always told him he was too old to read comics, and that I was going to throw them away, and he said I couldn’t, because you would need them one day.

Me?

He said it was very important you had them. That you’d need them. That’s why they’re still there, taking up space. So? Do you want them? Or should I throw them out?

Mom!

Well, they’ll have to wait. Homework and then bed.

But Mom …

Homework. Then bed.

But how could he sleep? He waited in bed for the lights to go out and his mom’s bedroom door to close. He tiptoed through and found the torch and slipped out of the house. The moon was full and silver and the night smelt of flowers.