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Plain Janey Brown transforms into Jane Blonde: Sensational Spylet in this brilliantly inventive, hilarious adventure story from a first-time author.Janey Brown feels like she is practically invisible. With her stick-thin legs, mousy brown hair and grey eyes, no one ever notices her. Then a crazy woman turns up at the school gates, claiming to be Janey's godmother. According to hip-hop-talking, larger-then-life 'G-Mamma', Janey Brown really is something special. She's Jane Blonde, Sensational Spylet - and it's time for her first mission... Swapping her too-big school uniform for a silver spysuit, and her battered satchel for a set of amazing gadgets, Janey soon discovers that nothing in her life, or in her past, is as it seems. Her elusive Uncle Solomon happens to be the head of SPI (Solomon's Politicational Investigations) and the greatest spy the world has ever known. Recruited by the government to work on top-secret Project Crystal Clear, Solomon has made a scientific discovery that could change the world. But now he's gone missing. Can Jane Blonde get to him first? Or will The Sinerlesse, a rogue spying group with evil purposes (and a very nasty dog), hunt him down and take his secret?… (more)
User reviews
I can see that the idea of plain mousey little Janey Brown being
When I was reading the sorts of books that I loved as a little girl, there was a sense that a girl could do whatever she wanted to do, regardless of what she looked like, regardless of how people tried to "pigeon-hole" her. The heroines of my childhood solved the problem, caught the baddies, righted the wrongs with a hefty dose of brain power, the occasional bit of personal jeopardy and heaps and heaps of front! They didn't get there with adults setting the agenda, adults "helicoptering" over their heads, and to be fair Janey does one or two brave, self-motivated things in JANE BLONDE.
Unfortunately this reader became increasingly uncomfortable as the book progressed. The style is a little forced, overly bright (no idea if that's a style that now appeals to little girls - would have driven me to distraction when I was that age.. but things move on). What couldn't be explained or justified quite so fairly was, however, the emphasis on the way characters "look". Jane could only be a spy when transformed from mousey to sensational blonde, Freddie could only be a friend when he was a plain and ordinary boy, too "special" otherwise. There seemed to be an increasing sub-text that the "look" was the important bit and the gadgetry was shiny and all very blonde and beautiful. Given I had this sneaking feeling of disquiet anyway, inconsistencies and missed opportunities with the storylines started to become stark.
There's not enough emphasis on some of the aspects of the book that could have been fun, a challenge, something to give a girl reading the book a sense of accomplishment alongside Jane. One of the threads of the story is that Jane has an uncle who has been secretly sending her dingbats to solve for ages. There's not enough of them included in the book (and there seemed to be a missed opportunity with the little figures drawn in the bottom right hand corner of the pages ... flick the pages to see the animation). Of the dingbats that are included, one's too easy and the other's purposely misleading. Not exactly playing fair with the reader. Why can't the readers of this book be challenged by a real puzzle?
As you can probably tell I was hugely disappointed by JANE BLONDE. So disappointed I sought a second opinion from the bloke around the house. Neither of us were particularly impressed, both of us (unprompted) came away with the same sense of disquiet about the message that this book seems to be sending. Maybe we're over-reacting (we're probably old enough to be grandparents after all...), but still, it would be nice to think that out there there are little girls who think that how they look is the least important thing in a world that needs a lot of wrongs righted.