Read Tom Swift Inventors’ Academy 1 – The Drone Pursuit free for 7 days. £7.99/month after - less than a paperback.
Victor Appleton's The Drone Pursuit is the first Tom Swift Inventors' Academy book, a gadget-packed school mystery for 9 year olds about a stolen drone and a caretaker who might be a wanted hacker.
Tom and Noah have spent the whole weekend building a drone with tiny microphones and a camera at each end. With virtual reality visors on, it feels like you're sitting inside it. (Noah gets so queasy he has to run for the toilets.)
At Tom's school this is all fairly normal. His dad's company paid for the place, and drones and little robots zip about the corridors. So nobody blinks when the boys escape a chase by sticking their drone to a ceiling tile.
Then it disappears. The drone's own camera shows Tom where it's gone, onto the cleaning cart of Mr Conway the caretaker and down into a locked basement.
That same morning a supply teacher puts on a film about famous hackers. One of them was never caught, and Tom's friend Sam thinks he looks a lot like Mr Conway. Tom isn't sure. Then every computer in the school crashes at once, and a text from an unknown number tells him to back off.
What makes it fun is the gang. Noah is the coder. Sam is the conspiracy theorist who won a scholarship for a water invention. Amy has a photographic memory and a clock in her head that's never wrong. They tease each other like real friends (Noah is renamed Hurl Boy within minutes).
Tom is a great narrator for a child who loves gadgets. He explains how everything works, from the sound filters to the pins that let the drone park in the ceiling. He's also honest that real-life plans are not his strong point.
His mum died when he was little, which is mentioned briefly as background. His dad still makes time for dinner with him every night.
If you've got a reader who takes things apart to see how they work, this is a very easy one to love.
If they want more of the Formidable Foursome, The Sonic Breach is next. This time Tom's class is building fighting robots for a tournament, with axe-wielding machines (plastic heads for practice!) and plenty of trash talk.
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