  | Full Text Reviews: Bulletin for the Center... - 07/01/2013 None of Max Segredo’s foster-home placements have worked out (hey, he wasn’t the one who started those fires), and now he has reached the Merry Sunshine Orphanage, the penultimate stop before juvie hall. Immediately, there are pretty clear tip-offs that this isn’t your average orphan school: a classmate attacks Max in his bed, and a faculty member slings a knife at him when he opens a random door. Merry Sunshine is, in fact, a training academy for juvenile spies, and the group is currently strategizing to stop a shipment of Nullthium-Ninety, a potent substance scheduled to be stolen and transported by LOTUS, an organization of really, really bad people. Unfortunately, Max is distracted by coded notes from an anonymous source suggesting that his father is still alive, and running his own side mission is more important to him than cooperating with a bunch of oddballs he barely knows. Max isn’t the lead character for nothing, however, and after stowing away in barrels, evading infrared motion sensors, surviving a shark tank, and booby-trapping a villain’s kitchen with an overcooked midnight snack, Max the near traitor turns into Max the hero, who realizes his fellow orphans are now his excellent new family. This is a short step up in complexity from Hale’s Chet Gecko mysteries (The Chameleon Wore Chartreuse, BCCB 6/00), and fans of that series will appreciate that the author’s signature similes (“His scrawls resembled football plays drawn by an orangutan with arthritis”) transfer intact. A glorious spy career, a return visit from his problematic father, and several sequels are undoubtedly in Max Segredo’s future. EB - Copyright 2013 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. School Library Journal - 08/01/2013 Gr 4–8—Thirteen-year-old Max Segredo is accused of starting a fire, which gets him displaced from yet another foster home. His caseworker takes him to live in Merry Sunshine Orphanage and, in just a few hours, Max begins to see that this is no ordinary home. With classes in lock picking and mixed martial arts, he soon discovers that it is a training school for spies. Someone slips him a cryptic message stating that his father is still alive and another one saying that his father needs help. Max meets a variety of characters at the institution and, living in close quarters, they develop a bond, giving him a family. Nevertheless he wants to find his father even at the risk of betraying everyone at Merry Sunshine. The book has nonstop action, clear detailed descriptions, and a plot that's easy to follow. Readers who enjoy spy and espionage novels might find this one too simplistic in techniques used and missions taken, but it is a good introduction to the genre.—Denise Moore, O'Gorman Junior High School, Sioux Falls, SD - Copyright 2013 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission. Loading...
 |