A Review of The Recruit by Robert Muchamore

I was perusing the new YA books in my local bookstore when I noticed a shiny new hardcover edition of Robert Muchamore's The Recruit and had to smile: I've read eight of the books in the Cherub series and ordered the last two books from England before they came out in paperback in the U.S. Why? Because this is the only kid spy/adventure series that can hold its own against the Alex Rider books. In fact, in some ways, I like this series better—and your son or daughter might, too.

As our series begins, James and his sister Lauren live in a rough neighborhood with their obese, alcoholic mother and her jerk of a sort of ex-husband Ron (who is Lauren's father). James is always getting in trouble in school, and this time it's a doozy: he shoves a girl who insults his mother and she ends up cutting her face on a nail protruding from the wall. When people start talking assault charges, James leaves campus.

He goes home thinking he'd better confess what happened to his mother, who, we learn, is the leader of a group of thieves. So James has every tech toy known to man and there's a lot of money in the safe. The brother of the girl he has hurt comes over and beats James up. A little later, James's mother has a heart attack and dies. He is put in a foster home, while his sister—who would rather stick with him—is picked up by her father, Ron. But James manages to get to the contents of the safe before Ron does.

In the foster home, James is befriended by his roommate, Kyle. James also falls in with some thuggish older boys at school and gets trapped in a liquor store robbery situation by one of the boys. He's about two inches away from jail when he wakes up in a new place and finds out he's being recruited for a secret organization of young spies called Cherub.

James has an incredible mental mathematical ability, but he's out of shape and doesn't know how to swim. He also has an anger management problem, along with poor impulse control. But the teachers and older students of Cherub push James to undertake the demanding task of transforming himself, culminating in a kind of basic training where he nearly blows the whole thing. (The final stage of that training is a three-day hike through snake-infested waters in Malaysia.)

James finally gets to go on his first mission, where he lives in a tent city, pretending to be the nephew of a member of a group of radical ex-hippies and environmentalists who are planning to bomb a big international conference. One of the key themes of this part of the book is that the bad guys aren't all bad and can seem sympathetic. James also has a heady brush with romance.

As an added bonus, later in The Recruit Ron gets himself thrown in jail and Lauren shows up at Cherub, to James's delight. Each book in the series is a new mission, and we watch James continue to grow and have setbacks along the way. We also follow some of Lauren's adventures.

One of my students, a 15-year-old video game-playing boy who's basically uninterested in reading, blazed through The Hunger Games and Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins, after which I was wracking my brain trying to think of what books to give him that would have a similar adrenaline level. Cherub to the rescue! He is now thoroughly enjoying Robert Muchamore's series. He got through the first book so fast that he had to wait a few days for me to come back with the next one. When he saw that I had brought both books #2 and #3, he got a far bigger smile than boys his age generally permit themselves to display.

As for the advantages over Alex Rider, the ensemble cast is a lot of fun compared to lone wolf Alex (or lone wolf Young Bond, for that matter). The fact that the kids are less wealthy and more down-to-earth might make them more accessible to the average reader, as well.

In terms of the quality of the writing, the Cherub books are well paced, with timely adventures and villains who are more nuanced than you usually find in a spy series. James is a likably flawed hero, and his sister is cheerfully tough and a little conniving. As a group, the young spies of Cherub have their share of interpersonal dramas, friendships and romances, quarrels and pranks—all while saving civilization from terrorists as well as arms and drug dealers. There's some kid humor in the mix, too. Muchamore is the kind of author who makes his characters and their lives seem real and compelling, regardless of the fantastical nature of their organization and its missions. James and his fellow spies aren't at all cherubic, but your young reader might be in heaven reading these books.

Note for Worried Parents: The Cherub books are for teens and are on the gritty side. The heroes are the kind of kids who get in trouble in school and sometimes wind up in juvie. I think I recall the boys noticing the girls' breasts once or twice, and there's some kissing. Also plenty of violence of the spy-adventure and fistfight variety. Some of the places James and his friends infiltrate are pretty rough, speaking of juvie (for example). But overall, Muchamore's series is surprisingly wholesome, considering what I've just said. Meaning, they're not dark and edgy in the way some of the YA titles for older teens are these days. And the kids' friendships and loyalty give the series a sort of Hogwarts feel. I'd say these books are a good fit for most middle school as well as high school readers, especially boys and reluctant readers.

Update: I took a look at some of the later books in the series, and there is some talk about condoms and sex, though the girl Cherubs mock James for being "randy" and he gets into trouble on one of the missions over his willingness to follow any pretty girl who comes on to him. Now that he's 15 or 16 (I believe he was 12 in the first book), James is sexually active, which is clear in the books, though the author doesn't dwell on it. I'd better call this series a PG-13.

A Review of Steel Trapp: The Academy by Ridley Pearson

Steel Trapp: The Academy is Book Two in a series I think of as one of the Alex Rider imitators, and I mean that in a good way. Few children's and YA books tend to be written for and about boys, so I deeply appreciate Anthony Horowitz's series about a reluctant teen spy. When I asked one of my new tenth grade students recently what he'd been reading, he told me how much he loves the Alex Rider books. A few days later, I gave the first book in the series to another student to read.

Of course, within the Alex Rider school of writing (James Bond or The Bourne Identity for kids), some titles are better than others. I thought the first book in Ridley Pearson's new series, Steel Trapp: The Challenge, was one of the better entries in the espionage/thriller genre for kids. I was particularly pleased that the whole story was set around a national science fair, and that Steven "Steel" Trapp was nicknamed for his mind. His compatriot, Kaileigh, was also presented as a science fair competitor. The only reservation I had about the book was that I felt that the adult characters (e.g., federal agents) got too much page time and had too much power over the plot. This is, of course, where teen spy books get tricky—they are essentially a thinly disguised form of fantasy. In real life, how much access could a couple of teens possibly have to things like weapons and national secrets?

In Steel Trapp #2, The Academy, Steel goes to spy school, although the school won't admit what it is up front. Steel, who discovered in Book One that his own father was a spy, gets suspicious when Kaileigh shows up at the same East Coast boarding school on scholarship. He and his friend begin investigating a secret society on campus.

Eventually Steel confirms his growing suspicion that Wynncliff Academy is a recruiting ground for future spies. He and Kaileigh are invited to join a junior espionage team whose mission is to track down a group of sophisticated young pickpockets stealing diplomatic secrets from guests at elegant Boston hotels. Of course, Steel and Kaileigh spend much of the book wondering who to trust.

The author intertwines Steel's story with the experiences of the pickpockets, essentially a group of bright street kids recruited by a mysterious woman, a chilly faux mother figure. The pickpockets are presented as an intriguing opposite number to Steel's group of privileged young academy spies. This gives us a feeling of having the best of both worlds, say, from Horowitz's Alex Rider series and Robert Muchamore's grittier Cherub series.

Pearson has a good time with Steel's difficulty in reading Kaileigh's signals when she subtly expresses her attraction to him. There's no sex here, just some social interplay that adds liveliness to the plot. Steel is also attracted to an older girl who has her own reasons for keeping an eye on him. (Note to the author: "handsome girl" is not a term used by today's teens! At least it's not in the dialogue...)

I'll just point out that Pearson's wording is occasionally clunky, but generally serviceable.

I was happy to come across a sports subplot in The Academy. Steel not only has some very physical adventures while playing spy games—most notably one involving hiding between the valve arms of a giant pipe organ to avoid being caught—but he learns to play a variation of dodgeball called ga-ga. According to Wikipedia, the game is Israeli in origin. Steel's sports practices and games add further appeal for boy readers. I have to admit, I found myself thinking about quidditch, despite the lack of flying brooms.

While Steel is athletic, his greatest ability is a photographic memory, which proves useful whether he's playing ga-ga or spy games. Pearson shows that Steel's abilities can't always save him from disaster, however, which makes the boy more likable. In fact, Steel is a little embarrassed about his gift because people have fussed about it so much over the years.

Less finely drawn as a character because the books are really about Steel, Kaileigh Augustine does make a good hook for bringing girl readers to the series. She is bright and talented in her own right, although she is set up to be a more cautious counterpoint to Steel, which struck me as a bit stereotypical.

As a relative newcomer to the teen spy genre, Steel Trapp seems more than capable of holding his own. I was pleased to find that Book Two kept its focus squarely on the kids. Let's hope the series just keeps getting better!

Note for Worried Parents: This book is listed for ages 9-12, but it feels like a wholesome YA to me. That simply gives it a nice broad range! There's a little flirting and boy-girl stuff here, nothing major. For example, Kaileigh suggests that in a pinch, she and Steel can pretend to kiss (yes, that old chestnut). Much blushing ensues on Steel's part, although at one point he really does kiss the girl.

A Review of Heist Society by Ally Carter

Ally Carter should be thanked for giving teenage girls their very own Alex Rider in her Gallagher Girls books: I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You; Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy; and Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover; with Only the Good Spy Young coming out in June of this year. Now Carter brings us another series, but instead of a girl spy-in-training, we get a girl thief, one who's already surprisingly well trained in the family business.

A note about tone: unlike the boy spy and amateur vigilante/detective books reviewed above, let alone the Alex Rider books themselves, Ally Carter's books are lighthearted, fast-paced, and practically cute. Her work reminds me a lot of Meg Cabot's, with feisty heroines, conversations about clothes and boys, and plenty of humor. She also sprinkles in clever, good-looking boys who are attracted to our girl heroes. But saying that makes both Cabot and Carter's books sound like sheer fluff, and I would hasten to assert that one brand of good storytelling is, well, simply entertaining, with more of a movie/TV sensibility than a heavy-duty literary one.

In that light, I'll tell you that I got a real kick out of reading Heist Society. Here's how the flap copy starts out:

When Katarina Bishop was three, her parents took her on a trip to the Louvre...to case it. For her seventh birthday, Katarina and her Uncle Eddie traveled to Austria...to steal the crown jewels. When Kat turned fifteen, she planned a con of her own—scamming her way into the best boarding school in the country, determined to leave the family business behind. Unfortunately, leaving "the life" for a normal life proves harder than she'd expected.

Soon an old friend named Hale shows up and tells Kat that her father needs her help. One of the best thieves in the world, Kat's dad has been accused of stealing paintings from a very scary Italian business tycoon, the kind who employs his own people for handling payback. Disbelieving Kat's claims that her father is innocent, the man gives Kat a deadline for getting his paintings back. He also has his goons spy on Kat while she's working on the problem.

As the title suggests, this is a heist book. Think Ocean's Eleven with a group of teenagers. Although Carter's plot is stronger at some points than others, the overall trajectory of the story works. And teenage girl readers will enjoy the obvious attraction between Hale and Kat, as well as Kat's jealousy towards her beautiful, too-cool cousin, Gabrielle.

Kat is at the heart of the story, and while her unwillingness to see how much Hale likes her seems a little silly, her worries about the threat to her father and about engineering a successful heist in a nearly thief-proof museum make her all too human, someone readers will cheer for. (The only truly credulity-straining plot point is Kat's assumption about the location of the paintings, a gigantic leap upon which to base an entire heist! But oh well...)

Carter gives us some fun touches, such as the names of cons and strategies that our seasoned young thieves throw around during their planning meetings, e.g., Groundhog and Fallen Angels. Kat's team includes colorful characters, as does her larcenous family. We meet the mysterious Nick, an apparent rival for Kat's affections, and we glimpse the handiwork of a legendary thief, Romani, who takes a special interest in recovering artwork stolen by the Nazis during World War II. Plenty of sequel fodder here.

Heist Society is the kind of book that will make you smile—or, if you don't smile, your teenage daughter will. Because even though I really like Alex Rider's seriousness, it's a nice change to meet up with Ally Carter's version of the YA suspense story. One with a definite sense of humor.

Note for Worried Parents: This book is listed for YA, but it's pretty wholesome. I'm guessing some parents might not want their kids to read a book that glorifies teen thieves, though Kat is presented as being conflicted about her family's career in general, not to mention about the possibility of going to jail. Overall, she tends to have kind of a Robin Hood sensibility. There is some teen attraction in this book, also talk about how sexy Gabrielle looks. When Kat's boy buddies see her dressed up (for the first time), they comment with humorous amazement that she has boobs. Otherwise, we get some hugging, a quick kiss or two, and that's about it.

The Popular Kids

So this week I'm thinking about books that are so popular they get made into movies and are otherwise worshipped by vast quantities of young readers, as well as by old people hoping to make money. These would be the books considered commercial, the ones that make the bestseller lists. Some of them are even well written! No, seriously, there's a reason kids like certain series. Jeff Kinney's Diary of a Wimpy Kid books, for example, are among the funniest things I've ever read.

When I cruised the bookstore yesterday, I came across a new book in another popular series, the Alex Rider books by Anthony Horowitz. The flap copy for Crocodile Tears doesn't give away much, except to say that Alex has been recovering from a gunshot wound inflicted by a sniper and that he wants to live a normal life, but human suffering is a business, and he's about to have another spy-type adventure related to that business. This reminds me why I like the Alex Rider books—they're not like those movies where being a young spy is a frolicsome thing. We are shown, rather, that being a teen spy is to be hurt and dirty and even exploited by one's spy superiors. There are a lot of Alex Rider wannabe's out there, most of them inferior because the characterization isn't as strong, which is why I bought the book, no questions asked. And one of these days I'll get organized enough to write a detailed post about the Rider imitators!

Which, amusingly enough, include the Young James Bond books by Charlie Higson. It's obvious that somebody in the Bond franchise saw how well the Alex Rider series was doing and said, "Hey! We should be writing those, about a younger version of Agent 007!" So they did. In my opinion, the Higson books are a bit uneven. I think Robert Muchamore's Cherub series comes closer to the Alex Rider books as far as being gripping. You'll find that Muchamore's young heroes are more earthy, in part—truly—because they aren't upper-class kids like Alex. Along the same lines, I've noticed that my teenage students, who are mostly Latino and African American and quite poor, have no interest in Alex Rider. I figure it's because he's too rich and white and British. I suppose I'm not the first to wonder if we'd have more readers in the inner city if we had more books, not just about pregnant girls and drug dealers a la Precious, but along the lines of the Percy Jackson or Alex Rider series, only with young minority heroes.

Of course, the first book in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, The Lightning Thief, is now a movie that will be coming out on Presidents' Day weekend in 2010. In case you haven't seen it yet, here's the trailer. The movie poster is shown to the left.

Just who are the most popular kids in the world of children's books? For boys, always an uncertain audience, Diary of a Wimpy Kid is currently number one—it's about a middle school kid, but readers in grades ranging as low as fourth or even third get a kick out of it. For one thing, it's a friendly read, with a hand-written-style font, relatively few words on the page, and lots of illustrations, making it sort of a graphic novel, or halfway there. Main character Greg Heffley is one of the most selfish kids you'll ever meet, but the joke is that he's a pretty typical middle school kid and has no idea he's that selfish. Very few writers have captured the essential boyness of that age as well as Kinney has. And the stuff he makes into humorous episodes! Greg's little brother turning potty training into a racket, what happens when you tell a 12-year-old boy he has to do his own laundry, and the true terrors of public pools are just a few things that come to mind. If anything, the DWK books resemble a really well-written, character-driven comic strip like Calvin and Hobbes or FoxTrot. Makes sense, since Kinney is first and foremost a cartoonist. There's some Malcolm in the Middle and Everybody Hates Chris here, too. Of course, movie plans are already underway for the wimpy kid.

The Percy Jackson books were burning hot about three years ago and continue to be popular, with the upcoming movie amping up interest. In case you haven't heard, they're about a boy who finds out the Greek gods are alive and well and living above Manhattan. What's more, Percy is the son of Poseidon. He soon finds himself fighting off monsters and going on quests with his new friends, many of whom are also demigods. There's even a training camp!

As for the Alex Rider books, they're a little less popular now than they were five or six years back, but they continue to be recognized reads for tweens and teens, especially boys. (The movie didn't do very well.)

For girls, the Twilight books are still sizzling, with the rising of New Moon, the movie, getting fans ages 13 and 31 all twittery and giggly again. (Team Edward or Team Jacob?) But Twilight has migrated to the adult bestseller list somehow, and the true hot book on this week's New York Times bestseller list for children is Catching Fire, Suzanne Collins' highly anticipated sequel to last fall's hot book, The Hunger Games. The books are about a dystopian post-U.S.A. where teens from the 24 districts are forced to compete in gladiator-like games to the death. When two teens manage to beat the system in Book One, the government tries to use them in Book Two. Katniss and Peeta also find themselves becoming the symbols of a resistance movement.

I'll give you a hint about book popularity: besides checking the bestseller lists, note how many customer reviews have been written on the Amazon book page. Catching Fire has only been out since September 1 and it has already garnered 300 customer reviews, which is more than most books rack up in 5-10 years. Since a single review is unlikely to stand out in a batch that big, what's really happening is a conversation, with people feeling wildly compelled to chime in. I'm sure you're wondering, so here you go: Twilight has 4,536 customer reviews, while Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone has 5,543. The Hunger Games has 674 and The Graveyard Book has garnered 327, both in the past year. And books that aren't so popular, the vast unwashed masses of the publishing world? They usually show somewhere from 10 to 30 customer reviews.

Two other key books on the New York Times Bestseller list for children's chapter books this week are Ellen Hopkins' Tricks and Maggie Stiefvater's Shiver. Ellen Hopkins, as I've said before, is not for the faint of heart, and definitely not for Worried Parents. I heard her talk about this book and read a selection in a workshop at the August 2009 Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) Conference. She said something like, "Well, if people think my previous books were shocking, wait till they see this one!" Her latest novel-in-verse is about how a handful of teen characters become prostitutes. The author read us a poem about a teenage boy reluctantly having sex with two older men, and I have to say I felt all prudish just listening! But there you have it—it's a bestseller. [Note: See Ellen Hopkins' note in the comments. It is her hope that the book will deter young people from pursuing this lifestyle.]

Shiver is a werewolf story (207 customer reviews on Amazon), so its popularity may be linked to the phenomenon that is Twilight. I have read Stiefvater's book Lament: The Faerie Queen's Deception, and what I learned is that the woman is a very good writer, better than most of the people currently writing teen paranormal fiction. It shouldn't surprise you to hear that Shiver was just optioned to be made into a movie.

Neil Gaiman's Newbery winner, The Graveyard Book, continues to enthrall, speaking of well written. There's no question about this one becoming a movie!

Another much-anticipated book in the NYT's top ten is Fire by Kristin Cashore. I read Graceling last year and thought it was good, though I wasn't quite as enamored of it as some of my friends in the Kidlitosphere blogging community. Graceling is about a magically gifted warrior girl on a quest to circumvent the evil first manifested by the kidnapping of the elderly father of a king. Prequel Fire is set in the same world as Graceling, telling the story of an unnaturally beautiful girl, the daughter of a monster, who has powers of mind control and gets caught up in her country's political struggles. (I try not to get Catching Fire and Fire mixed up!) The cover art to the left is from the UK edition.

The other four books in the NYT's top ten are The Magician's Elephant by Kate DiCamillo (which someone just gave me for my birthday), The Million-Dollar Throw by Mike Lupica, Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick, and Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher. These are, respectively, another magical fable from the Newbery award-winning author of The Tale of Despereaux (which, you'll note, was made into a movie), a sports book in a series that's growing in popularity and really should generate at least one movie, a Twilightish paranormal romance about a hunky fallen angel, and a Young Adult novel about the reasons a teenager has killed herself.

Of the books on the list, The Magician's Elephant and Thirteen Reasons Why are probably the least commercial. I'm a little leery of teen suicide books, but that's just me—I've got more of a middle grade fiction personality than a YA one. Without even reading it, I can recommend The Magician's Elephant to you. Not to mention The Graveyard Book, which I have read. It manages to be both literary and commercial, a fairly remarkable achievement on Gaiman's part.

Overall, I thought this list was more promising than the list of Top Ten Bestsellers in Children's Picture Books, which made me want to cry. Read it and see if you can guess why: Fancy Nancy: Splendiferous Christmas by Jane O'Connor, The Christmas Sweater: A Picture Book by Glenn Beck, LEGO Star Wars by Simon Beecroft, Nubs by Mary Nethery, Waddle by Rufus Butler Seder, Eragon's Guide to Alagaesia by Christopher Paolini, Skippyjon Jones: Lost in Spice by Judy Schachner, Otis by Loren Long, Julie Andrews' Collection of Poems, Songs, and Lullabies by Julie Andrews and her daughter, Emma Walton Hamilton, and Where the Wild Things Are: The Movie Storybook by Barb Bersche.

From the depths of my soul, the question bursts forth: What are these kids reading? And close on its heels: What are their parents thinking?

Most of these "picture books" are movie tie-ins, books with visual effects, books by political pundits, etc. While I know Fancy Nancy is popular, I feel that after the first book, the series quickly sold out and went downhill, becoming a fashionable franchise (no pun intended) rather than true storytelling. For me, the only real books on the list are the poetry collection edited by Julie Andrews and her daughter, Skippyjon, and Otis. I have yet to get my hands on Andrews and Hamilton's anthology, but as a poet and poetry lover, I look forward to reading it. I confess I'm not a big fan of the Skippyjon books, possibly because I don't own a cat, although I suppose in this case the cat is actually a stand-in for a small child. I read Otis standing in a bookstore and thought it was a nice story about an anthropomorphized tractor, though not as compelling as, say, the classic Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel by Virginia Lee Burton.

Sigh.

If you take the time to skim through Amazon's list of the Top 100 Bestselling Books for Children, you'll get a little better picture of the market, finding other commercial books such as the 39 Clues series and my 9-year-old nephew's favorite, Klutz Press's very fun Encyclopedia of Immaturity, along with more literary works. Well, a few, anyway. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak is holding its own, for instance.

I did notice a boxed set of the first four Magic Treehouse books in the top 100. Mary Pope Osborne has really cornered the second grade series market, and yes, her books are a pleasant read. But I'm telling you—I can't wait for someone to come up with a far more wonderful series for that age group. So far, it hasn't happened. This begs the question: how good can a series actually be? Does the very concept of a series somehow dilute the literariness of books? Then, too, why do some books seem more like powerful sequels than a series series? Yes, some of the successful books listed above are series, but do second and following books fall short by definition?

On that conundrumical note, I'll conclude my report on the coolest of the cool. It's kind of like watching the popular kids at school. Sometimes you wonder why they're popular when they seem so ordinary, or even, in some cases, so unappealing. On the other hand, there are times it makes sense. Some of the popular kids are truly extraordinary, and their singular status seems completely deserved.