Chil­dren’s

City of Spies

Susan Kim; Lau­rence Kla­van and Pas­cal Dizin, illus.
  • Review
By – September 1, 2011
City of Spies is rem­i­nis­cent of old-time comics, all the way to the real spy gad­gets” offered in the back of the book. The book is set in 1942 New York and is fash­ioned as if it was writ­ten in that era. Heroes are not giv­en the out­landish super­pow­ers of a mod­ern char­ac­ter. The sto­ry cen­ters on Scoot­er, aka Eve­lyn Spiegel­man. She has been sent to Man­hat­tan to live with her sin­gle beat­nik Aunt Lia while her father gets remar­ried again. Eve­lyn has cre­at­ed an imag­i­nary world in her own com­ic series in which her father is the super hero and Scoot­er, her father’s nick­name for her, is the trust­ed side kick. How­ev­er, Eve­lyn runs into her own adven­tures and meets a side­kick of her own, the superintendent’s son, Tony. Togeth­er they uncov­er a Nazi spy ring, help Aunt Lia face per­son­al chal­lenges, and even allow Eve­lyn a glimpse into her Jew­ish her­itage about which she is une­d­u­cat­ed. The art­work is bright and invit­ing, echo­ing the appeal­ing style of Herge’s Tintin series. Dizin has recre­at­ed a world of detailed comics and ani­mat­ed action that per­fect­ly com­ple­ment the writ­ten text. This com­ic book is also well suit­ed to adults who wish to revis­it their child­hood com­ic book expe­ri­ences. For ages 9 – 15.
Dro­ra Arussy, Ed.D., is an edu­ca­tion­al con­sul­tant who spe­cial­izes in inte­grat­ing Jew­ish and sec­u­lar stud­ies, the arts into edu­ca­tion, and cre­ative teach­ing for excel­lence in Jew­ish edu­ca­tion. She is the moth­er to four school-age chil­dren and has taught from pre-school through adult. Dro­ra is an adjunct pro­fes­sor of Hebrew lan­guage at Drew University.

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