Do your kids have Nintendinitis and you’d rather they spend more time flipping the pages of a book than punching their thumbs on a controller? I have just the book for them.
“Mac B. Kid Spy” by Mac Barnett recounts his early days as a kid spy working in the service of Her Majesty the Queen of England. Set in the late 80s, for any adult reading this, it is a trip down nostalgia lane of 80s mohawks, video arcade games, and analog phones. On the less glamorous side, it is a reminder of the Cold War that was going on at that time, with the KGB man being the ultimate nemesis in this action-packed kid-friendly series.
Mac B. is a spunky, adventurous kid who did well in school and this proved to be his only qualification for being the Queen’s hand-picked spy. Book after book, he solves mysteries and looks for missing artifacts at Her Majesty’s pleasure. Just like a mini James Bond, the fast-paced page-turner will not just delight your kids but also insert a lot of educational tidbits as well.
History
History can be a snooze. But as Mac navigates being in a foreign country, he is guided by the Queen herself as she explains the historical background behind each mystery that he needs to solve. Oliver Cromwell, Tower of London, the Soviet Union, and the KGB. Fun trivia peppered throughout the book help make the stories fun and even educational.
Did you know that the Buckingham Palace has 78 bathrooms? It’s true. You can look it up!
– Mac Barnett
British English
With the Queen of England as one of the main characters, she educates Mac on the differences between British and American English. Soon, your children will be dropping words like trousers for pants and pants for underwear. They’ll become familiar with words like “aerials” (British for antenna) and portmanteaus like “dorgi” (a smooshing of “dachsund” and “corgi”). You can look that up, too, if you want to. 🙂
They also get to learn about spy-specific language like dead-drop, live-drop, and red herrings. It is a fun way to introduce vocabulary and to learn new terminologies.
Geography
As his adventures take him outside England, (i.e., France, Ireland, Japan, Iceland–just to name a few), readers also take in bits and pieces of information about these countries. They learn that Japan has an emperor and that France used to have 3 emperors all bearing the same name. The flags of each country are introduced as well. Pretty soon, your child will beat you at all the games of Trivial Pursuit with Geography as the category.
So out of the 5 books pubished so far, the series has stayed true to its form and has stuck to the story line without injecting extraneous topics and a forcing a narrative often found in today’s children’s books. In this series, kids can simply be enthralled by the hijinks of a kid spy’s life or simply relate with Mac on regular kids’ issues on height insecurities, peer acceptance, and his passion for video games. We look forward to reading future books in the series, and we hope that he will continue with the winning formula that he has in this series so far.
Books in the Series:
The Mama Travels 
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