SECRET AGENT

This story of a boy trying to patch up his parents’ marriage has heart, but is seriously marred by a deliberately choppy writing style. Kyle’s shy dad has been writing a novel for years, while working in a used bookstore. When his mom can’t take it anymore, Kyle and his friends decide they must find a way to publish his dad’s book. After finding evidence that Kyle’s dad truly is a great writer, the kids gang up to get New York’s most famous literary agent to read it, carrying out their clandestine caper with humor and suspense. While the book’s constant use of sentence fragments looks good in a readability formula, it actually makes the prose more difficult to read than would complete sentences. However, the style and fun story still may appeal to many in the middle-school set. (Fiction. 9-12)