Customer Reviews

Secret Agent Jack Stalwart: Book 2: The Search for the Sunken Treasure: Australia

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I liked the first Jack Stalwart book. It was a harmless, fun, easy chapter book like The Magic Treehouse series or the Dinosaur Cove series, although it did lack any educational value...

This one, on the other hand, was totally different. Filled with weapons and bad guys and kidnapping and attackers and what I thought was an inappropriate portrayal of a female pirate... (For example, Jack is shot with a poison spear and put in a cage, his friend is put in a cage with a Komodo (sp?) dragon to be eaten, the female pirate is drawn with an exaggerated large chest and repeats vapid statements like "we will kill you") My 7 year old was scared and I didn't enjoy reading it at all. There are so many nice chapter books for kids in this age range that teach history and science along with the storyline and don't include guns, spears, kidnapping and violence. Like I said, the Magic Treehouse and Dinosaur Cove books are great and The Magic School Bus series is fantastic. I was definitely misled by the first book in this series which was harmless fun - this one was totally different.

This review was written by my nine year old for a school project, but rest assured, even though he used this for school, he is completely hooked on these books, GREAT SERIES!

Here's his review/report (contains spoilers)

This book by Elizabeth Singer Hunt, called The Search for the Sunken Treasure is about a boy named Jack. He is a secret agent who has assigned himself his own mission... a search for his brother. For this mission he ends up in Australia, and not only will he be facing sharks and a Kinodo Dragon, he will be facing pirates!

Jack has to figh at group of deadly pirates to save a scuba diver that they captured. These pirates are a bunch of crooks that steal treasures and innocent people. They use a Kimodo Dragon to guard and hurt prisoners.

Jack has many problems on this mission. One problem was when he was trapped in a group of jellyfish. After he escaped he didn't knwo that he was surrounded by two Great White Sharks. He escapted the sharks by shooting a capsule of blood far away from him, the sharks followed the capsule.

Jack finally saves the prisoner who he found was bitten by the Kinodo Dragon by giving him a shot with the cure. He also captures the lead pirate a long with her crew and found out that they had stolen a sunken treasure.

I liked this book so much that I can't tell what my favorite part is, but I was very interested in the Kinodo Dragon. I like how the Jack Stalwart books always have a happy ending. I think that boys 8-9 woudl like this book, I think you should buy it today!

I read this aloud to my boys (age 8 and 12). We had never read any other books from the series. I find that short, action-packed, illustrated books for young readers are fairly hard to find, so I do recommend the book, but I feel that it has some shortcomings.

The first couple chapters weren't that interesting, but the boys got very interested in the plot, especially toward the end.

The illustrations were nice and modern, but repetitive (the same one at the beginning of each chapter, and little variation in the illustrations at the end of each chapter).

The book ended a bit abruptly for my taste -- I expected a short scene at the end with Jack at home with his parents again.

For me as an adult, it was hard to "suspend my disbelief" and accept that a 9 year old would be called to assist in the mysterious disappearance of a diver. A kid spy undercover as an ordinary kid would have been much more credible (ala Cody Banks, etc.).

Call me picky, but I also had trouble with the inaccurate portrayal of the Komodo dragon. The book said something about the komodo dragon somehow paralyzing its prey with its bite, then coming back 5 minutes later to eat him. Wikipedia says nothing about this method of hunting, and it's highly disputed that the Komodo dragon is venomous or that the germs in its saliva would cause such a quick reaction. Besides, the Komodo dragon is normally a scavenger.

My 7 year old son and I can't get enough of these stories! We have every one in the series and look forward to more. We even purchased some to donate to his second grade classroom. They are fantastic!!