Review of "Spy at the Airport" by Alexandru Palamariu, Illustrated by Beatrice Favereau

 Score: 88/100 (8.8 out of 10)

When you were growing up, did you ever pretend you were a spy? Did you turn ordinary household objects into high-tech gadgets, or imagine that your bedroom, backyard, or neighborhood hid a secret base?

Many of us who grew up with 007 James Bond and Spy Kids did!

Spy at the Airport captures that limitless childhood imagination and transforms it into a lively comic-style adventure filled with secret tunnels, homemade inventions, daring escapes, and one young spy determined to complete his most challenging mission yet.

Spy at the Airport by Alexandru Palamariu, illustrated by Beatrice Favereau, introduces an unnamed young narrator who proudly identifies himself as “THE SPY.” He practices sneaking into unfamiliar places, experimenting with homemade gadgets, and escaping without being spotted. After completing missions at places such as the mall and museum, he decides that infiltrating an airport will be his final training exercise before beginning what he considers the “real spy stuff.

Before beginning the mission, the Spy gives readers a playful tour of his life. He attends the strangely named Bob Cob School, trains on the monkey bars, and maintains a secret underground base equipped with a worktable, planning board, ladder, and even a bathroom. His collection of inventions includes Magma Boots, Sticky Gloves, Faster-Than-Light Shoes, spy glasses, and a laser-taser. He also introduces his family, including his serious dentist mother and his father, Charner, who apparently enjoys chocolate.

The mission begins when the Spy enters a tunnel through his secret base’s bathroom and travels to the airport in his special car. Once there, he attaches the vehicle to the roof, uses his laser to enter the building, and hides above the crowds. He asks readers to choose whether he should go left or right, making the story briefly interactive, before deciding to locate a disguise. After using the Magma Boots to hang upside down and changing clothes, he realizes that it is already midnight and rushes home before his parents discover that he is missing.

The following morning, the Spy believes he has successfully completed his training. However, he notices that his mother’s stomach is becoming larger. He discovers that she is pregnant, and his excitement about future spy missions is replaced by visions of diapers and babysitting. The revelation serves as a humorous cliffhanger and suggests that the Spy’s next great challenge may happen much closer to home.

The book’s greatest strength is its unfiltered childhood imagination. The story feels as though a highly creative child is enthusiastically explaining an elaborate game while inventing new details along the way. That spontaneity is particularly appropriate because the back cover identifies the book as having been made by a seven-year-old child and inspired by Dog Man. The result is not a conventional, tightly constructed spy story, but an energetic glimpse into how children transform ordinary places, playground equipment, bathrooms, cars, and family developments into parts of an enormous adventure.

Several jokes are wonderfully strange in the way that children’s humor often is. The Spy complains that Bob Cob School sounds as though the principal selected its name from a cereal box. He casually admits that he forgot to mention his laser eleven pages earlier. His father’s unusual name receives its own knowing reaction, while the narrator repeatedly speaks directly to readers as though they are already participating in the mission. These details give the Spy a confident, mischievous personality.

Beatrice Favereau’s illustrations support that personality through bright colors, exaggerated expressions, comic-book panels, speech boxes, action bursts, and oversized sound effects. The frequent changes in page composition create the impression that the narrator’s imagination cannot be confined to an ordinary picture-book layout. Images such as the underground base, the gadget collection, the airport crowd, and the Spy hanging upside down in his Magma Boots are particularly effective. The typography frequently becomes part of the action, with words such as “ACTIVATE,” “PHEW,” and “BOOM BOOM” functioning almost like visual effects.

The interactive left-or-right decision is also a clever inclusion. Although both answers ultimately produce the same outcome, circling a direction or drawing a line invites children to engage physically with the book. Additional moments in which the Spy asks readers questions help create the feeling that they are accompanying him rather than merely observing him.

The pregnancy revelation gives the ending more substance than we initially expected. On the surface, it is a joke about a child fearing diapers and babysitting. Underneath that humor, however, is a recognizable childhood experience. The Spy has just begun imagining himself as independent, capable, and ready for larger adventures when a major family change interrupts his plans. A future installment could use this development to explore jealousy, uncertainty, responsibility, and the eventual bond between siblings while preserving the series’ comedic spy premise.

The story would nevertheless benefit from additional editorial refinement. The airport mission does not have a specific objective beyond entering and leaving without being noticed. Giving the Spy something concrete to retrieve, investigate, photograph, or discover would create clearer stakes and make the successful completion of the mission feel more satisfying. Much of the book is devoted to introducing the narrator, his family, his equipment, and his base, while the airport sequence itself passes relatively quickly.

Let's be blunt: this book is chaotic, random, and confusing, which is ironic because we thought we just discovered the most random book ever in The Pilot and the Parrot by James Allan Krause, PhD. Now that book has competition.

Some transitions are intentionally chaotic but may leave readers wondering exactly what has happened. The disguise sequence, for example, is visually amusing but not completely clear in narrative terms. The book also contains grammatical, punctuation, spacing, and phrasing issues that a careful copyedit could correct without removing the young author’s personality. Certain pages have several boxes, images, and text elements competing for attention, occasionally making the intended reading order less obvious.

These imperfections are understandable in a book created by such a young author, but acknowledging the author’s age should not prevent the work from receiving thoughtful editorial guidance. In fact, preserving Alexandru Palamariu’s distinctive humor while giving the story a clearer mission, smoother sequence, and more polished text could make future Spy Adventures considerably stronger.

Check it out on Amazon!