Curious about Mystery & Adventure

 

Image source: jamesponti.com

Ponti, James. City Spies. 2020. 384 pages. LP: $19.99, ISBN: 9781534414914. Grades 3-7

James Ponti has a background as a screenwriter and television producer, and the fast-paced plot, richly-detailed real-world settings, and thrilling mission of City Spies reflect his experiences. This adventure book is above all else, fun, and therefore appealing to audiences of different reading levels and interests. From the moment readers meet Sara, threatened with incarceration in a juvenile detention facility after hacking into her crooked foster family's records, they'll want her to land on her feet. Ponti wastes no time making sure she does by way of 'Mother,' who is actually male and the head of a spy ring of kids working for the British version of the CIA, M16. This eccentric spy with a melancholic back story of his own, gathers hard-luck kids with exceptional skills to help solve mysteries and bring justice. It's a formula that's familiar (Spy School, The Mysterious Benedict Society, The Sherlock Society) yet kept fresh here by Ponti's tight plot and attention to details.

City Spies moves quickly, shuttling the reader through New York, Scotland, Australia, and Paris, but these settings are treated reverently and not as mere backdrops. Scotland's Edinburgh is urbane while overcast and dreary, its coastline bracing and fresh compared to the cramped part of Brooklyn Sara leaves. She is re-christened Brooklyn, and joins Rio, Sydney, Paris, and Kat(hmandu) as a trainee spy skilled at hacking. While her spying talents seem to develop pretty quickly, keeping with the book's fast pace, Ponti avoids painting her, and all his characters, as uni-dimensional. Her foster family is not comically cruel but genuinely so, her bravado masks a deep longing to fit in with the other kids and finally find a family. Other characters are also carefully drawn and reflect the diversity of the world's cultures and, sadly, the different ways societies fail children. Even Mother is not merely a mysterious odd- ball, but a man permanently disfigured by a fire, betrayed by his wife, and desperate to find his children.

City Spies relies on a simple good vs. evil framing: the M16 kid spies vs. the nefarious and shadowy Umbra crime syndicate which attempts to hack the internet and cause chaos across vital systems (governments, hospitals, private records) throughout the world. This straightforward framing serves the story well since the details of Umbra's plans and the complexity of inter-related computer networks are complex enough. For readers, the fact that something they rely on almost without thinking could be compromised is not only troubling, but realistic as ransom ware attacks are not just fantasy.  Brooklyn plays a critical role in thwarting Umbra's attacks, solidifying her place in the group and setting up space for City Spies to become a series kids will want to check out.

Image source: Penguin Random House

Soontornvat, Christina. The Last Mapmaker. 2022. 368 pages. LP: $17.99, ISBN: 9781536204957. Ages 8-12

Can we rise above our origins and achieve not only respectability, but greatness? Sai grapples with this desire for family honor, represented in the golden links of a family's lineal chain, in Soontornvat's, The Last Mapmaker. Sai can never have a lineal bracelet because she is low-born, living with her con-man father in a fantasy kingdom inspired by Thai mythology. However, she can become respectable and reach beyond her circumstances by serving as an apprentice to the kindly mapmaker, Paiyoon, who takes her along on a voyage to discover and map the far reaches of the seas. Their adventure becomes complicated when Sai realizes that the lands she and Paiyoon are tasked with mapping are actually being colonized and their environments degraded by royal decree. 

The Last Mapmaker does not fit neatly into one particular children's book genre--it is a high fantasy with  dragons and a beautifully-realized world of its own, it is a mystery as Sai attempts to work out what exactly is the goal of her kingdom's mapping mission, and it is a fast-moving, unpredictable adventure on the high seas. From pursuing the dragon and attempting to uncover the secrets of the mysterious Sunderlands, all while working to improve her own societal standing, Sai grows to realize that the dragon is not the enemy and the Sunderlands are not merely places to map with resources to exploit. After the dragon unleashes a terrible storm, thereby sacrificing himself, Sai realizes being high-born does not necessarily mean being righteous.

This is a unique book that raises issues not often considered in children's fantasy and adventure--the role of poverty and class status in determining one's future, the motivations behind kingdoms' desires to explore, and the possibility for understanding, if not reconciliation, with a parent who has disappointed. Readers may find the plot, while fast moving, a little confusing given its twists and turns. In the end, Sai is completely changed in her view of both her world and her place in it, changes supported by what she learns on her adventures.