The Terrible Trio: The Mystery of the Lost Cape                                                                               

    
Swapna Haddow
Ill. Minky Stapleton
Scholastic (2026)
Graphic novel, 192 pages                                            

Paperback
ISBN 978 1 77543 901 1

 

We’re three volumes into The Terrible Trio series 
and I hadn’t noticed that the animal superheroes 
all wear capes when they come to the rescue. Yes, there they are: super-spoonbills saving overturned turtles, super-giraffes rescuing kittens from eagles, and super-pythons capturing bank-robbing capybaras. All those heroes wear capes at work.

Yet, our superheroes, Zeb the zebra, Barry the lemur and Margarine the penguin, are never seen wearing capes. Of course, they were right at the back of the queue when the superpowers were handed out. This means, rather disappointingly, that Zeb can camouflage himself on pedestrian crossings, Marge can make mac ‘n’ cheese, and Barry has nice handwriting. Perhaps they don’t need capes.

 

As Swapna Haddow’s latest chronicle of their adventures (and misadventures) begins, the trio are tidying- up at their mac ‘n’ cheese restaurant. The Lost Property Box poses a challenge; most of its contents seem to be Zeb’s rubber ducks. This results in the usual weird conversation which is a cheerful feature of The Terrible Trio:

Barry: ‘Your rubber duck is called Chick Chick?’

Zeb: ‘Yup.’

Barry: ‘You didn’t want to name your rubber duck DUCK DUCK?’

Zeb: ‘Nope. His name is Chick Chick. Marge helped me name him.

 

Barry finds a cape in the lost property and tries it on. He floats to the ceiling. He unties it and falls to the floor. A terrible temptation overcomes Barry. Soon reports are coming in of a masked crusader who has outwitted an entire wolf gang of bullion robbers.

Barry wears swimming goggles to keep the flies out of his eyes, so his friends don’t recognise him as he appears on the TV news using his super-skills to create life-saving notice-boards. Even as the Masked Crusader becomes a cult hero, Zeb is wondering about a very large emu who is offering a very large reward for a missing flying cape.

What follows is comic mayhem, especially when the emu is revealed to have a second super power, in her ability to kick bottoms.

 Swapna Haddow’s secret super-power is writing crazy conversations but she has the additional ability to construct running gags that recur throughout a story, ensuring a good time is had by all readers.

Minky Stapleton’s super-power is creating animal illustrations that show a flying lemur finding a way to rescue a sky-diving elephant who has become hooked on a steeple – and making us believe it could really happen.

 The Terrible Trio series is proof that humour is alive and well and living in New Zealand.

The series so far:

The Terrible Trio: the (not so) Superheroes (2025)
The Terrible Trio: the Day the Mac ‘n’ Cheese ran out (2025)
The Terrible Trio: the Mystery of the Lost Cape (2026)

Teaching Notes are at: the-terrible-trio_teacher-notes_final.pdf

Trevor Agnew

10 June 2026  [Review 3843]