James Ponti: City Spies 3. – Forbidden City (Aladdin 2022)
The teenage agents also start their summer vacation at school, but they can’t rest, because they’re going on a new mission. Except for Brooklyn, who has to attend summer school to make up for her shortcomings. Meanwhile, the others are sent to Moscow and Beijing to take part in a chess tournament and accompany a millionaire’s daughter. However, the task contains more dangers than they expected.
One of the most important points of the book for me was that home is the place that always awaits us and welcomes us, no matter how long we are away from it. We were able to read important things about the search for oneself and about writing itself too. We hear from one of the characters that the key to good storytelling is to develop the characters as the readers can relate to them, not to the things that happen to them or the places they go. If, on the other hand, the characters are well developed, we will be curious to see what happens to them. This is exactly what I feel when reading James Ponti’s books.
James Ponti started writing when he was still in elementary school. The characters of his first story were Mickey Mouse and his friends. It’s funny that years later he wrote scenes for Disney Channel Mickey Mouse Club. He also had another link to Disney, as he worked at Disney World during his summers in college, where he entertained people with funny stories on canoe tours. During these summers, he learned how jokes work and what really makes people laugh. The author also has three middle-grade book series. The idea of City Spies first came to his mind in Paris, where he decided to write a series with episodes set in different big cities. The series currently has five volumes, the sixth, London Calling, will be published in English next February.
