Spy School by Stuart Gibbs - ADVISABLE

Spy School  by Stuart Gibbs, 304 pages. Simon and Schuster, 2012.  $16

Content: Langauge: PG (6 swears); Violence: PG; Sexual Content: G. 

EL, MS-ADVISABLE 

Ben Ripley is a math nerd and one day when he comes home from school he finds a CIA agent in his family room.  Ben is wisked away to spy school under the pretense that he is a very smart kid.  When he gets to school, however, he finds out that he is being used as bait for a mole within the school.  He doesn’t have any special skills that would make him a good spy, unlike the other kids at the school, especially Erica the girl who is interested in finding the mole herself.  In an attempt to prove his worthiness to be a spy, he joins with Erica and they start investigating the kids and staff at the school.  In a great twist, they uncover the identity of the mole and  in turn save the whole school from being shut down and the top members of the CIA from being killed.  

This is a fun book with quirky characters and a spoof on spy adventures.  It’s a great book geared towards boys in upper elementary and middle school with a funny courageous main character.  

Reviewer, C. Peterson