by James Ponti (Author), Brian Holden (Narrator), Tantor Audio (Publisher)

An Audiobook

     I loved Framed. It’s perfect reading for middle schoolers or older. It has adventure, danger, good thinking, friendship, and a few wild mysteries. Author James Ponti writes one of my other favorite series and he knows how to tell stories that kids love. 

Can a 12-year-old nerdy boy work for the FBI as a covert asset? Can he get special training at Quantico? Can he have a special FBI “handler and cool spy devices to carry?”  Why not? Several kids his age work for MI6 in the UK in Ponti’s City Spies books, and they do quite well.  In Washington D.C., Florian Bates and his BF Margaret, use his T.O.A.S.T. method to solve a museum’s art theft crimes. It’s clever. And really fun. I’m going to try it too!

What is T.O.A.S.T., you might ask? No, it’s not baked bread!  And it’s not a slang word for getting in terrible trouble (although Florian encounters both of these).  No, it’s an anacronym for the “Theory Of All Small Things.”  Florian’s secret of his surprising knowledge (like Sherlock Holmes’s) is seeing the small, sometimes tiny, things that others miss and putting them together to make a picture of a person, a scene, or a… well, a picture in a frame. For instance, a wedding ring on the right hand and a bit of baby spit-up on a man’s coat collar might mean he’s from Europe and a new father.   Or a daisy tattoo on a dangerous criminal’s hand may mean he’s…. but I don’t want to give everything away. 

Florian lives out the fantasy of some boys who dream of spying, carrying secret tools and trackers, and catching bad guys by their wits.  It’s a good, clean, action book with some sweet (not geeky) friendship moments and a few lessons learned from not listening to a handler’s instructions (or parents).  

The kid who narrates the book is almost perfect, with his boy, agent, and gangster voices.  His mom’s European-accented voice, not so much. But it’s not spoken often.