Secret Agent Jack Stalwart: Book 6: The Pursuit of the Ivory Poachers: Kenya

These books are an amazing series. They really provide a true spy series appropriate for young children. The "spies" are part of the GPF - Global Protection Force - an international spy ring devoted to promoting justice and made up entirely of kids. The books have great gadgets - this one features a Power Pogo Stick which allowed Jack, the protagonist, to leap 15 feet in the air and help him escape a hungry pack of hunting lions, the Flyboard (one of Jack's all time favorite gadgets) that helped him soar in the air after the bad guys and a Lava Laser that when pointed at a piece of metal, made the metal so hot that it would burns someone's hands if they held on to the metal. Jack is a 9-year-old boy and it's great for kids to have a super-spy just like them. The books are also completely benign - no one really gets hurt, the bad guys always get caught, and the kids have whatever gadgets they need to get out of a bad situation (and all those gadgets fit in a normal-sized backpack.) Each book also focuses on a different country in the world and thus has an educational aspect to it in exposing children to different cultures (e.g. Kenya, Indonesia) and different political concepts (e.g. poaching, piracy). I pre-order each new book in the series and my 7 1/2-year-old son loves them when we read them aloud to him. (In this particular book, he was a little bit afraid of the snake.)