Spy Dog - Andrew Cope

...books that he choose was Spy Dog written by Andrew Cope. This book was part of a feature about getting boys into reading and caught the eye of my eldest, Adam. I looked at the book and thought it was a little above his age but he insisted he wanted it so I agreed that we would read a little each night. This is the longest story that we have ever tried to read, all previous books being big picture books.

The Cover
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...spy dog on the front (black and white dog wearing sunglasses), with some realistic looking bullet holes added in too, this makes you realise that it is an adventure book straight away.

The story
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The general story is about a spy dog known as Lara or agent GM541, we start the book with her escape from a baddie and her re-homing after being found by the RSPCA. The story goes on to tell us about all her wonderful ... more

I decided it was time to treat myself to a new book from the library and had to take my two little boys with me, my 4 year old really wanted to choose a few books for himself while we were there and as the service is free I thought why not?

One of the books that he choose was Spy Dog written by Andrew Cope. This book was part of a feature about getting boys into reading and caught the eye of my eldest, Adam. I looked at the book and thought it was a little above his age but he insisted he wanted it so I agreed that we would read a little each night. This is the longest story that we have ever tried to read, all previous books being big picture books.

The Cover
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The cover is red with a picture of the spy dog on the front (black and white dog wearing sunglasses), with some realistic looking bullet holes added in too, this makes you realise that it is an adventure book straight away.

The story
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The general story is about a spy dog known as Lara or agent GM541, we start the book with her escape from a baddie and her re-homing after being found by the RSPCA. The story goes on to tell us about all her wonderful spy dog talents and how she tries to hide them from her new family as she waits to be found by the secret service to go back to work.

The story also follows the baddie that she ran away from, Mr Big, as he also tries to track her down and kill her in revenge for her destroying his drug smuggling career.

Will the family find out her secret? Will Mr Big track her down? Will she ever be rescued by the secret service?

My Opinion
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I would start by saying that although my 4 year old has really enjoyed listening to this story, really this book is aimed at 8-12 year olds. This book would be suitable for boys or girls, the language is quite easy for the most part with a few unusual words thrown into the mix, which I think is good for the older readers to get their teeth into. There are a few parts where graphic descriptions are used about what Lara did to the baddie, which had my husband tittering as he was listening in to our story Adam also found this really funny.

There is an element of comedy in this book although in the whole I would consider this an adventure story.

This is a book for readers essentially with just a few black and white cartoon like pictures every few pages. Not much for the younger ones to look at.

Each chapter is quite short; usually around 5/6 pages, which means the book, can be put down easily. It is a good story and I have looked forward to reading a little more each night with Adam, in fact I was tempted to finish the book one evening without him as I really wanted to see what happened at the end…it gets very action packed in the last couple of chapters and bedtime for Adam came before we could finish the last 2 chapters!

There is a follow up to this book that I would be more than happy to read to Adam before bedtime, I am not sure if he will go for anther book as long as this one so I might not get to read it for a while, but as Adam gets older we will definitely be looking for more Andrew Cope books.

The technical stuff
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The copy we borrowed from the library was a paperback.
Published by Puffin details can be found at www.penguin.com
ISBN 0-141-31884-8
Price £3.99
165 pages

Would I recommend this book?
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Yes I would, to an older child that can read to a good standard I think this is a great book, if you have a younger child with a good attention span you could have a go at reading this to them and I am sure they would enjoy it. It is a children’s book so although I have enjoyed it I would not really recommend it to an adult.
 

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