Spyder

Written and illustrated by Matt Carr

Scholastic Press

32pp, £6, paperback

ISBN 9781407172934

Matt Carr is back with a follow-up to Superbat. Once again, humour and facts are woven together in an entertaining picture book with bright and bold illustrations.

Spyder is the world’s smallest secret agent and possibly the only one with eight legs. She is relaxing at home when she receives an urgent mission from Miss Money Spider: an evil bluebottle is about to contaminate a child’s birthday cake. Spyder swings into action and races to reach the cake before Mr Bottle walks over it with his germ-ridden feet. In an exciting race against time, Spyder has to overcome dangerous obstacles, use her super spy kit equipment and even make a daring escape from the bath. Despite saving the day, poor Spyder is then trapped under a glass by a screaming human (but don’t worry - she escapes using her laser pen).

Spyder is a funny read; in fact, it is puntastic. Starting with the title itself, no opportunity for punning is missed. From Miss Money Spider, the arachnid spy’s secretary, to when Spyder nearly gets stepped on (“Danger was afoot”), to the evil bluebottle shouting “I’m off to have my cake and eat it”, clever humour is present throughout. Keen-eyed readers will also notice small details, such as Spyder reading Charlotte’s Web and her newspaper being called The Daily Web.

The book is a great mix of story and facts. A basic factsheet about the villainous bluebottle explains how flies can walk germs onto our food and why spiders are such amazing creatures. I didn’t know, for example, that a spider’s silk was stronger than steel. Similar factsheets could be easily produced in class about other insects. A nice class activity could be to make factsheets for other minibeasts - perhaps dividing them into villains and heroes. The factsheet about spiders also talks about arachnophobia; this prompted a discussion among the children about what they were afraid of and why. The book could also be used in PSHE as a way into discussing fears and emotions.

All the illustrations are in bold, bright colours, with flat backgrounds making them very striking. This is a great book to read aloud to a large group, as the clear illustrations are easy to see, even at the back of a crowded classroom. Matt Carr is a graphic designer, as well as the author, and I think this can be seen in the clarity of his illustrations.

There is a great sense of fun throughout the whole book and I think that the author very much enjoyed producing it. I read it six times to various infant classes. The Reception classes were the group that least enjoyed it, as the puns and spy references often went over their heads. It was a much greater success with the Year 1 and 2 pupils. These children all enjoyed the spy angle of the story, but some of the punning still went over the heads of the Year 1s. All the children liked the race-against-time aspect of the story and were delighted to hear (in a horrified fashion) that bluebottles liked to walk on “stinky stuff” - we all knew immediately what that was.

I really enjoyed reading it, and on the fifth read through I was still picking up new puns and entertaining details.

One of the nicest touches is that Spyder is a female. This completely bamboozled some of the boys I read to. Despite the use of female pronouns and being told that Spyder’s middle name wasn’t Danger but Dorothy, the boys still all presumed that Spyder must have been male, as she was a spy. They were shocked, and I mean properly dropped-jaw shocked, when I pointed out Spyder was female. Interestingly, most of the girls didn’t have the same problem.

Here are some comments from Dragonflies, a Year 2 class:

“I liked Spyder because there were loads of jokes.” - Lena

“I liked it because she is cool and great. I love it.” - Evelyn

“She is amazing when there is a bug who is planning to do something sneaky.” - Julia

“She is clever.” - Bella

“I liked Spyder because it is funny.” - Edgar

“You don’t want poo on your birthday cake.” - Lewis

“I liked Spyder because it upset generic gender roles, gave the girls a clever, female action hero, and made the boys reconsider who can be a spy and address their own innate stereotyping.” - Mrs Ormes

A big hit for St John’s Primary, then. Funny, informative and with great illustration - and a lovely message of understated girl power.

Sarah Ormes is school librarian at St John’s Catholic Primary School in Bath

If you would like to write a review, please contact sarah.cunnane@tes.com