This Amazing 5 Year-Old Made Her Own Superheroes

My daughter and I love superheroes. We watch a fairly good deal of Superman and Spider-man cartoons on television and we've been known to have campfires with mini figure Batman and Robin also being invited. Batgirl and Wonder Woman are usually the only two female superheroes at our parties or in our stories though. Yes, there are more female superheroes out there, many of them really great ones. But we didn't think there were enough of them my daughter could imagine herself as while we made up stories or acted out scenes in our kitchen.

So, we created our own. Or, more specifically, my five year-old daughter created more. These are the superheroes she pictured flying through the air or transporting themselves in the many ways superheroes can transport themselves. These are their names and their backstories and we wanted to hear the kinds of stories other girls and boys could come up. She's also included prompts to take these new superheroes on adventures all over the world.

We hope you take them where you'd like.

All images courtesy of Leah Reynolds, Age 5

Constructa

Story: A construction worker who goes by the name Leah Activa and works on a crew that builds bridges in her city. She’s always had her superpower and her parents first noticed it when she’d complete advanced LEGO sets in the time it took them to open the box. She once built a hospital for children injured in a bus crash in 37 seconds.

Superpower: Can erect buildings in a matter of seconds using just her bare hands.

Arch nemesis: Breaking Down Boy, whose only mission in life is to destroy every building he sees regardless of those living within its walls.

Start your story prompt: Leah stood back and watched the cyclists cross the bridge. Summer was a great time to build bridges because it was so rewarding to watch them get used immediately.

This bridge was no different. A family crossed the bridge with a picnic basket in hand, headed towards the big park in the city centre. Leah locked eyes with the dad and waved at him.

And then the buildings behind them collapsed. And she heard the familiar laugh of Breaking Down Boy...

Knock, Knock

Story: A princess who was forced to live in her room at the top of her parent’s castle for the first seven years of her life. Determined to make the world a happier place than her tiny

room, she spent those seven years developing a vast array of knock, knock jokes. Ever since escaping her room by using three of her best jokes on the three guards that stood outside her room, she’s stopped numerous bank robberies.

Superpower: Able to turn villains into allies with well-timed knock, knock jokes.

Arch nemesis: Dad Joker, deliverer of terribly depressing, horribly unfunny jokes.

Start your story prompt: Knock, Knock was looking to buy a getaway cottage. A place she could escape to on the weekends or after a particularly long stretch of people-saving. She always felt strange going into a bank. Nobody expected a princess to need help financing a home, but the life of a princess isn’t what we see in fairy tales. Knock, Knock could write a book about that. So there she sat in a tiny green chair, waiting for a bank manager to talk to her about ways to buy this cottage. The managers started walking toward her. She was smiling and that was a good sign for Knock, Knock.

“Me: ‘Dad, make me a sandwich!’ Dad: ‘Poof, You’re a sandwich!’”

Oh no, Dad Joker had arrived...

Una Corn

Story: Descended from a long line of warrior unicorns, Una is the last unicorn on Earth. She also refuses to live her life along the lines of the warrior mentality her ancestors carried with them and prefers talking to villains face to horn instead of jumping on them. Unless, of course, they continue to ignore her. Then she uses her magic horn.

Superpower: Uses her magical horn to alter the minds of villains. Using her horn she can also alter the physical properties of objects. She turned a gun into a pool of water once.

Arch nemesis: Gary, a run-of-the-mill goat.

Start your story prompt: Gary could gain access to pretty much any building in the world. Because Gary was a goat and nobody ever bothered to stop goats because goats, in the minds of anyone who has never met a goat, were stupid. So Gary had no trouble walking unhindered into the grocery store where he planned to steal every piece of produce. He’d done this before, many times. It was why his belly was so big. Gary did not lack a healthy diet.

“Look mom, it’s a goat,” he overheard one boy say as he walked by.

“And look, it’s a unicorn....”

The Atmospheric Avenger

Story: A feline astronaut who at the age of 12 months became the youngest cat to travel to Mars. During her return flight she passed through solar rings that gave her superpowers that she only discovered while training for her next mission. With space debris becoming an ever more dangerous part of living on earth, she decided to dedicate her life to flying through space deflecting anything hurtling towards Earth. Oh, and she fights aliens.

Superpower: Flying, super strength and a knife made out of minerals from a far away planet that can stun villains without causing them pain.

Arch nemesis: Gravitron, an older dog alien who flies with a cape made of snakes, rips petals off flowers, kocks chairs out from people’s butts as they try to sit down and generally just brings people down.

Start your story prompt: It could get lonely out in space. Sure, the views were outstanding but the company was decidedly, um, quiet. Space debris rarely talked and the aliens looking to get to Earth more often than not tried to avoid the Atmospheric Avenger. So she played a lot of imaginary connect the dots with the stars and invented a one-cat version of baseball where she batted away the meteoroids as they came closer to Earth’s atmosphere.

Even these games grew old though. And on this morning (or was it night, she couldn’t remember) she was about as bored as she ever got punching away space junk. Until, in the distance, she spotted Gravitron’s rocketship racing towards Earth.

Toss Up

Story: A woman who decided to take up weight-lifting at the age of 64. during her first training session, an explosion happened deep under the gym causing a gas deep within the Earth’s crust to escape into the water supply. This woman took a sip of the water from a ountain after her first set of bicep curls and the water, combined with the natural fruit juices she had brought to the gym to keep her energy levels up, gave her superhuman strength.

Superpower: Able to throw buildings and skyscrapers up to one mile. Throwing not limited to dwellings. She can also throw cars and really large boulders.

Arch nemesis: Goatee the Dragon, who, in the nicest terms, hated everything. And breathed fire.

Start your story prompt: When you’re a woman with superhuman strength, it’s sometimes hard to go about your day-to-day business without leaving destruction in your wake. In just 30 minutes, Toss Up had already accidentally ripped a door off her car, crushed a microscope with her bare hands and pulled down a basketball net at the local park. Nope, it wasn’t always easy, but provided you had a good insurance policy, it was fun. And that’s what Toss Up was reminding herself as she felt the hot breath of a very well-known dragon on her neck.

“Hi Goatee, how are you today?”