Egham Chatterbooks enjoys Anthony Horowitz's Alex Rider: Stormbreaker

The Chatterbooks group at Egham Library were eager to share their views at their  Chatterbooks session on Tuesday 24 May 2016.  The group had a lively discussion about 'Alex Rider: Stormbreaker' by Anthony Horowitz.  Most of the group members liked the book because it was full of action and adventure and they identified with the teenage spy character, 'Alex Rider' who undergoes vigorous spy training and is given fantastic spy gadgets to help him on his mission. The book appealed to both female and male readers.  However a small number said they didn't like the book because it was unconvincing in places - how could Alex Rider survive some of the attacks against him?

 

The Chatterbooks group enjoyed writing their reviews about the book. These reviews are displayed on the wall in the Junior Fiction section of the library to encourage other children to read them and perhaps borrow the book and decide for themselves. Even though this book didn't appeal to some of the Chatterbook members, all of them said they enjoyed the film, 'Alex Rider: Operation Stormbreaker' (2006) and had read other Alex Rider novels of which there are 10 in the series, as well as a series of short stories or supplementary books.

 

If you're running a Chatterbooks session, I found that the book encouraged everyone to participate in the discussion with little prompting. The group was also fully engaged in drawing and writing about objects that could be turned into spy gadgets and sharing their ideas with each other.

 

All spies need a really good memory and the Chatterbooks group enjoyed a memory game at the end of the session, where they were given 1 minute to look at 12 objects on the table. The objects were then taken away and they then had 1 minute to list as many objects as they could remember. Well done Harry and Sophie for getting 11 out of 12 in the memory game - you're on the road to becoming first rate spies!