Spy Toys

Mark Powers's Spy Toys is a funny action adventure for 9 year olds about three faulty toys who end up as secret agents.

What happens

Dan is a teddy bear, a Snugaliffic Cuddlestar to be exact. He's built for bedtime stories, warm milk and, most of all, hugs. Unfortunately his snuggle chip is faulty, which makes him about a thousand times too strong. His very first hug folds a metal test dummy in half.

So down the trapdoor he goes, onto the pile of rejected toys. It's a grim place with a giant mechanical poodle on the prowl and a soldier who has a foot where his head should be (it's funnier than it sounds).

His new neighbour is Arabella, a rag doll with a crossed wire and a truly terrible temper. She hates kids, she hates hugs and she once dangled her owner out of a bedroom window. Then there's Flax, a police robot disguised as a cute bunny, in sunglasses and a shirt and tie.

A mysterious woman called Auntie Roz scoops up all three. Her job, she says, is stopping horrid things from happening. Their job is to pose as toys and guard Sam, the prime minister's son. A villainous half-elephant cereal mascot named Rusty Flumptrunk is planning to kidnap him.

The action is brilliantly daft. Their training test is against the McBiff Triplets, three toddlers with bodybuilder muscles who test army equipment to destruction. Flax's head pops off. Dan pulls a lamp post out of the ground. And when Sam asks Dan for a kickabout, one gentle tap of the football blows up the prime minister's Rolls-Royce!

Under all the explosions there's a lot of heart. Dan desperately wants to give someone a proper hug, and he's scared he'll hurt them if he tries. Sam's dad keeps calling Sam a coward. When Sam wakes from a nightmare, you really feel for both of them.

Arabella's grumpy one-liners will get the biggest laughs. Flax and Arabella bicker over their walkie-talkies like an old married couple (Dan's answer is to switch his off). Is there anything funnier than a tough rag doll being put in a pram by a toddler?

If your reader likes their action loud and their heroes a bit broken, this is a great start to the series.

What to read next

If it goes down well, Spy Toys: Out of Control! puts the same three back on duty. It opens with a giant hedgehog villain about to lower a whole family into a volcano, and it only gets sillier from there.