Chil­dren’s

Steal­ing Nazi Secrets in World War II: An Inter­ac­tive Adventure

Eliz­a­beth Raum
  • Review
By – June 22, 2016

This is one of those fun You Choose” books in which the read­er is offered a series of choic­es on each page and when the choice is made and the appro­pri­ate next page is select­ed, the sto­ry changes to reflect the read­er’s deci­sion. Part of a pub­lish­er’s series also fea­tur­ing war spies of the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion, Civ­il War and World War I themes, this one is excit­ing right from the start because the read­ers gets to role-play being a World War II spy and can steal secret infor­ma­tion from the Nazis that may well affect the out­come of the war. The book can be read numer­ous times and a dif­fer­ent end­ing can be achieved with each read­ing. Along the way, a great deal of his­to­ry is learned in an effort­less and engag­ing man­ner. A bit more his­tor­i­cal con­text would have been help­ful for those who are not using sup­ple­men­tal edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als but for those who already have some back­ground about the sub­ject, this is a fun edu­ca­tion­al expe­ri­ence for a would-be secret agent. It is an easy-read­ing book, designed for a reluc­tant read­er and can be used as recre­ation­al read­ing at home or can be incor­po­rat­ed into class­room activ­i­ties to pro­vide a break from the usu­al teach­ing meth­ods. Rec­om­mend­ed for ages 8 – 10.

Michal Hoschan­der Malen is the edi­tor of Jew­ish Book Coun­cil’s young adult and children’s book reviews. A for­mer librar­i­an, she has lec­tured on top­ics relat­ing to lit­er­a­cy, run book clubs, and loves to read aloud to her grandchildren.

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