Sonny Fink, evil reporter, writes an online newspaper that is uploaded at one minute past midnight every night. The news is always frightfully awful and what is predicted seems to happen every single time. Like the time it rained frogs and nobody could leave their house! Thirteen-year-old detective editor Scoop McLaren and her best friend, Evie, set out on a mission to discover everything about this mysterious Sonny Fink...
Thank you New Frontier Publishing for sending me a copy of this fun, pacy MG novel to review. I really enjoyed reading about Scoop and Evie, and I'm looking forward to the next story in the series. Also, how pretty is that cover? The illustrator, Beatriz Castro did a brilliant job bring Scoop to life. It's so clever too - after finishing the book, I went back and spent a few minutes looking at all of the subtle hints and references in the border that I hadn't noticed before I started.
Here are three reasons I think you should read Scoop:
1. The pacing is brilliant. Castles keeps tensions running high throughout, and there's plenty of twists and turns to the plot. You're left feeling as though you are investigating the case along with Scoop and Evie.
2. Scoop and Evie make a brilliant partnership. I loved reading their chats, and the way they approached working on the paper together.
3. There's a great range of media in this book, from text chats to newspaper articles. I could see this being really good in schools as a way to introduce pupils to writing their own articles - as well as showing them some brilliant examples of how to write, there's also a lot of potential fun to be had coming up with their own Sonny Fink style stories! There's even a list of 12 writing tips from Scoop at the end as a great starting point.
