It's amazing how a great book series can lead you to look for others like it - not the same, mind, but similar.
After reading Stuart Gibbs' Spy School series, we've been on the lookout for equally great spy series. They're hard to come by, in part because I think it takes a lot of detailed plotting to get a spy / thriller just right (a topic I'll tackle in a post on In Writing). Gibbs is laugh-out-loud funny and a periodical re-read favorite in our household. I can't keep his books out of the bathroom. None of his books have covers, that's how well they're read. We loved this latest installment in the Spy School Series!
So far, this is what we've come across. They both feature strong female MCs.
The first one features Ananka, who witnesses something very strange while watching a park in NYC. When she follows the strangely white-haired girl Kiki underground, Ananka discovers a world of tunnels and criminals with nefarious plans. Can she and the other kids who learn of this mysterious new world -- called the Irregulars -- save the city? And whose side is Kiki really on, anyway? Can they trust her to do the right thing?
The second one features kick-butt, code-cracking, super-smart Ruby Redfort, who is apparently a side character in another series we haven't read yet. Be that as it may, we enjoyed Ruby's travails -- when other kids are drowning in boring school lectures and taking standardized tests, she's trying to survive in a forest for a weeke, because she's at the equivalent of spy school but for a crime fighting organization called Spectrum.
If you know of a strong male MC spy series, I'd love to hear about it!
