SECRET AGENT
by Robyn Freedman Spizman & Mark Johnston
Atheneum
ISBN: 0689870442
Ages 9-12
240 pages

• Read an Excerpt

Kyle Parker is a typical high school kid. That is, until his mother kicks his father out of the house --- for good! Kyle is so upset that he ends up doing a number of not-so-typical things.

What caused Ms. Parker to summarily end her long-time relationship with her husband is, of all things, a book! Mr. Parker wrote a book years ago and has spent a great deal of his time trying to get it published. After hearing year after year that the book will be published any day now, Ms. Parker has had enough. So Mr. Parker gets himself and his book "published" right out the door.

Kyle is heartbroken and has to do something to bring his parents back together. After thinking long and hard, he decides that the only "something" he can do is to get his dad's book published.

Easier said than done --- by far. Kyle enlists the aid of three friends, including Lucinda, who has a wild crush on him (only he doesn't know it, of course). He swears them to secrecy and they become secret agents, whose mission is to get that book into the hands of the most acclaimed editor in New York: the aloof, beautiful, impossible-to-see Mercedes Harrison.

How the secret agents accomplish this is a tour-de-force of zany plotting, unheard-of maneuvering and daring forays into the impenetrable fortress known as Boykin Books, home of the all-powerful Editor-in-Chief, Mercedes Harrison.

Somehow the fly-by-night, Keystone Kops/secret agents manage --- by hook and by crook --- to get Mr. Parker's book into the meticulously manicured hands of Mercedes Harrison. What happens after that will delight you, surprise you, and perhaps even sadden you.

This is a fun book, with crazy characters and a preposterous plot. You may finally get impatient with all the repeated attempts at teen-talk, such as "I mean…" and "Oh, yeah" and fragmented one- and two-word sentences. But once past that, readers will very much enjoy the antics of SECRET AGENT.

   --- Reviewed by Robert Oksner

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