Spy School Letter Essay

I recently finished reading the book Spy School by Stuart Gibbs a, 320 page fiction book about an average kid named Ben Ripley. Though he is considered average he is the farthest thing. Ben Ripley is one of the smartest 11 year olds in the world he scored a 2260 on his SAT’s and his teachers don’t even bother grading his tests anymore so they just put A’s on the front when they see his name written. When ben applies for a magnet science school he isn’t very surprised they accepted him, but when he finds out it’s a disguise for a super spy school his whole world gets flipped upside down. Ben knows he could never be as good as the other kids at this school, but after ben wins a fight against an assassin that snuck in his room and threatened to kill him. Everybody thinks he is some sort of super spy with inhumane cryptography powers while he doesn’t even know what cryptography is. When Ben has an encounter with a girl named Erica Hale, A super spy notorious for being the best spy and school. And the latest in the hale spying dynasty. After Erica tells Ben that he is really just bait for the enemy to enter the school so he can get captured, he doesn’t think he has what it takes to be a spy.

But when ben saw the antagonist Chip and his goons going into an underground tunnel system, he follows only to see them looking at a bomb directly under the school.

Erica then hacks into the clueless principal’s office and sends an e-mail to all faculty saying that ben has a fake program called JackHammer that can decode anything. Making ben irresistible to any enemies wanting to get their hands on it.

Ben is put in a secret base made for the president under ground which gets infiltrated by the enemies and Ben is taken hostage by people trying to get jackhammer.

I read this book because it was recommended to me online after reading the book “I Have A Bad Feeling About This” by Jeff Strand.

 

“Hello, Ben,” said the man in my living room. “My name is Alexander Hale. I work for the CIA.” And just like that, my life became interesting. It hadn’t been, up till then. Not by a long shot. That day had been a prime example: day 4,583, seven months into the twelfth year of my mundane existence. I had dragged myself out of bed, eaten breakfast, gone to middle school, been bored in class, stared at girls I was too embarrassed to approach, had lunch, slogged through gym, fallen asleep in math, been harassed by Dirk the Jerk, taken the bus home . . . And found a man in a tuxedo sitting on the couch. I didn’t doubt he was a spy for a second. Alexander Hale looked exactly like I’d always imagined a spy would. A tiny bit older, perhaps—he seemed about fifty—but still suave and debonair. He had a small scar on his chin—from a bullet, I guessed, or maybe something more exotic, like a crossbow. There was something very James Bond about him; I could imagine he’d been in a car chase on the way over and taken out the bad guys without breaking a sweat. My parents weren’t home. They never were when I got back from school. Alexander had obviously let himself in.”

 

I like this quote because it’s at the very beginning of the book and it shows how unprepared and caught off guard Ben is when he first gets the news that he is going to be a super spy.

 

I recommend this book to anybody who likes pretty easy reads and a lot of action in a small book. I would rate the book a 7/10.