EJ Spy School 2 - The Race product reviews

The Race follows a similar format to the first book in the EJ Spy School series. It has simple to read chapters, large font, a simple storyline and basic black and white illustrations. I think that these books will specifically appeal to girls who are just starting to read chapter books. I would imagine that the readers might be waiting with excitement for the next book in the series to become available in book shops. The website listed in the book allows readers the chance to go to the website and read a chapter from the books which have already been release. This ensures that children will remain excited about the current books and the ones due out soon.

The Race begins with enough information to allow a reader to either skip the first book and read this one as a standalone book or to follow on reading from the first book. The Race gives the reader an instant shot of adventure as EJ10 is called to a location called Shine. I can imagine the young reader of this book developing her own mini adventures at home or school. She might imagine that she is EJ10 and go to the toilets and pretend she is off on an adventure through a tunnel! The imagination that could develop from reading these books is fantastic.

This book would make a lovely, simple starting point for children to write their own adventure stories. It would allow them to keep the plot simple, yet exciting. The other spin-off which could occur with a group of children would be to create an obstacle course designed by the children and they could challenge themselves to meet the time limit in order to be a secret spy. The little duckling in the book could begin a discussion about whether we want to win a race at any cost or if we have to consider others in the course of that race.

I look forward to reading the next books in this series.

Fresh off reading 'The Test; the kids dived into 'The Race' book number two in the EJ Spy School book series.

Naturally this book was aimed at my young children but even my son was a bit perplexed by the story which had Emma, in the middle of a school day, going off to Spy School. His comments about 'what about the teachers, she's going to get in trouble and make them all scared when they can't find her' agreed with my thoughts, so for that part of the story, it could have been done a bit better as what school isn't going to notice a student going missing, but I digress.

Emma is a kind and caring young girl, as showcased when she stops to aid a young duckling. The kids really enjoyed listening about Emma trying to get to the end of the race course in time and kept cheering for her and butting in asking me if she would make it to the end on time. My four year old wants a slide hiding behind the toilet like there is in this book. I must admit I am a little curious to see if the running off during school time will be addressed or ignored, meanwhile the kids are asking me to read it yet again.

A fun book and a fun series, Emma is a good role model for boys and girls.

Having loved reading The Test Miss Five, Miss Seven and I were straight into this to find out what happened next for Emma. Miss Seven and Miss Five were completely engrossed as I read this to them and loved all the illustrations. These books really portray Emma as being a very happy, loving and nice person and I love that about this series! These are the type of books I want my girls reading as I think Emma is a very positive role model for them.

The thing that struck me most about reading this and the previous The Test is that Miss Seven really enjoyed listening to me read them even though she had read them herself. Lately once she has read a book once she won't read it again so it was good that she wanted to reread these.

I really like how well this book is written. The sentence structure is very simple and Miss Five was easily able to follow the words because of the large font used. Although it is a chapter book there is only four chapters so it was very easy to just read the whole book (mainly because I also was enjoying the story and wanted to find out what happened for Emma!)

As soon as I closed the book Miss Five wanted to know if I would buy her the next book as she loved it and wanted to read more. She has subsequently been reading this and The Test to herself at night. I am so pleased that she is enjoying this series and will definitely be looking out for more. Its great that both Miss Five and Miss Seven want to read them also so that's extra value for money right there. I am a little surprised that this was $2 more expensive than The Test. $8 or less is easy to spend on these books but $10 or more does get me thinking twice. Anyway a brilliant series and I can definitely recommend this series to your little Miss aged 5 -8 years.