ALICE ÉCLAIR, SPY EXTRAORDINAIRE

A young pastry chef turned spy in mid-1930s Paris boards a luxury train in order to steal papers from an enemy agent.

Thirteen-year-old Alice Éclair is an accomplished pâtissière, creating cakes and pastries in her mother’s pâtisserie. She’s also been receiving mysterious puzzles, codes, and sets of instructions in the mail. Someone is training her to be a spy—and she eventually deduces that it’s her uncle Robert, who was believed to have drowned in the Seine two years ago. Now, at his request, Alice takes on a dangerous mission, boarding the luxurious Sapphire Express in hopes of stopping a German spy. She balances her pastry duties with her spying—somewhat conveniently at times. On the train she encounters an Englishwoman journalist, a pair of American jazz musicians, and a professor and his teenage daughter from England. Alice is clever, plucky, and accomplished, but a surprising twist reveals that, despite her uncle’s advice to “trust no one,” she may have made an error in judgment. Relying on her maman’s motto, “nothing is ever wasted and nothing cannot be saved,” brave, scrappy Alice refuses to give up on a mission whose critical importance becomes clear to her the more clues she uncovers during her dangerous and suspenseful journey through France.

Has all the elements of a marvelous story, including a clever, likable young hero with a strong moral compass.