Xander and the Pen

I enjoyed meeting Xander and following his trials and tribulations as he journeys through the plot with the magic pen. Set in a small town where a lot of the people rely on one factory owner for work, it includes a mystery that needs to be solved and a good character journey.

Xander, is easily relatable to the target audience of 9-13 year olds. Just like them he is still finding himself and making some wrong choices along the way, he sets a good example by rectifying bad decisions through positive actions.

The illustrations, while very well done, don't really match what I imagined the characters to look like, they seem more like grown-ups than the intermediate age characters in the story.

This is a well constructed book that should last well even in the classroom. It has a great format with the well spaced font, generous sizing and a sprinkling of pictures. It would give a struggling or less confident reader the success of reading a true chapter book.

This book has a good pace moving through the story with the right amount of detail to keep the reader interested. I would definitely recommend this book to be in a classroom library. It has just the right amount of ‘hard’ vocabulary to make sure the student is learning new words without having to look it up.