Captain Underpants and the Perilous Plot of Professor Poopypants


Captain Underpants and the Perilous Plot of Professor Poopypants is the fourth book in the Captain Underpants series written by Dav Pilkey.

Plot

A scientist from the country of New Swissland called Professor Pippy P. Poopypants goes to the United States to demonstrate how his striking Shrinky-Pig and Goosy-Grow can help the world by reducing the garbage and increasing food, but everyone laughs at Poopypants' name rather than take him seriously.
Meanwhile, Jerome Horwitz Elementary School is going to a restaurant-arcade called The Piqua Pizza Palace, but when George and Harold rearrange the sign, Mr. Krupp catches the boys as he bans them from the school field trip and demands they clean the teachers' lounge, making them lose their chance of going to the Piqua Pizza Palace with everyone else. However, the boys get their revenge by modifying things around in the teachers' lounge and after the field trip, the teachers fall into George and Harold's trap and get largely covered in glue and foam pellets. They chase the boys around the school and after seeing the teachers looking like abominable snowmen, Mr. Fyde quits, thinking he's going nuts, prompting Mr. Krupp to find a new science teacher.
Meanwhile, Professor Poopypants sees an ad to teach at the school and applies for the job, thinking children to be kind and sweet-hearted, but they spend days laughing at his silly name. The professor only gets them interested by building a robot that makes gerbils jog along with them but it is short-lived. Some time later, Ms. Ribble reads The Pied Piper of Hamelin, which inspires George and Harold to make a comic about the Professor trying to take over the world, which destroys the last of Professor Poopypants' sanity.
He makes the gerbil machine as large as a tall building, then shrinks the school and holds them hostage to turn their names sillier, with a system of 3 alphabetical name charts based on the first/last letter of each part of a first and last name. George and Harold get Captain Underpants to steal Professor Poopypants' enlarging machine, but he and the machine are shrunk in the process. The two of them try to enlarge the school back to normal size, but get flicked off the school. Harold makes a paper airplane that George enlarges and after many dangers, Underpants rescues them. George enlarges Underpants to the gerbil's size, then he defeats Professor Poopypants and everyone's names revert. The boys use the machines to bring themselves, the school and Captain Underpants back to normal size. Captain Underpants is soaked with water, turning him back into Mr. Krupp.
Professor Poopypants is hauled off to jail for crimes against humanity. From the advice of George and Harold, he legally changes his name so that no one will make fun of it anymore. Unfortunately, he changes his name to his grandfather's, Tippy Tinkletrousers, that which only makes the prisoners laugh at him even more, much to his anger.

Characters

Authors:
The book that followed this was The Wicked Wedgie Woman.

Reception

The Book received mainly positive reviews from critics.
The main antagonist of the book, Professor Poopypants, would return in later books of the series as both a recurring character and even the main villain. He would also return in.
The book was removed from an elementary school in Page, North Dakota due to parental complaints.