Game Boy Caper: Mac B. KID SPY: Mac Cracks the Code by Mac Barnett

The lights dimmed. The previews started. Craig leaned whispered, "Hey, buddy, can I get that Dr. Pepper?"

When Craig opened the can, there was this little spritzing sound.

The usher came to our row with a flashlight and said, "Kid, will you come with me?"

My mom stood up. "This is ridiculous...."

"It's just... there's a phone call for this kid,." the usher said.

Craig was dumbfounded. "Who would call him?" I knew who.

It was the Queen of England.

The usher explains that there not-very-friendly lady with an accent on the pay telephone in the lobby who demanded to speak with Mac.

"Mac, I need you to leave that theater immediately and come to England. A car will arrive for you in five minutes."

Unknown to all except Queen Elizabeth and the higher echelons of the worldwide counterspy operatives, Mac B. is needed elsewhere. British counterspies have captured an enemy spy's underwear, and with ultraviolet light discovered a code word, DRUBBALUBA, written on the label. A British team of crack cryptologists and the world's supercomputers have failed to decode it, so of course the Queen of England has sent for Mac B., KID SPY!

Queen Liz confines Mac B. at a desk in a locked room to work on the code, where after he comes up with one code-breaking possibility, he gets restless and climbs out the palace window in search of some respectable life-threatening spy guy adventures.

Little does Mac B. know that the code key word is the winning solution to the Video Game World Championship match which has been stolen by Mac's arch-nemesis, the double agent KGB Guy. Mac's case takes him on a chase to Paris to consult with the French president and on to Tokyo to meet the Emperor of Japan who uses his anagram skills to send him on to Nintendo headquarters in Kyoto where Mac finally cracks the code with his trademark spycraft tool, his Gameboy.

In his fourth book in series, Mac Cracks the Code (Mac B., Kid Spy 4) (Orchard Books, 2019), illustrated in his trademark cartoons by Mike Lowery, best-selling author Mac Barnett unleashes another wild and crazy plot starring his intrepid kid spy. Winner of two Caldecott Honor medals for his quirky work with off-beat illustrator Jon Klaasen, Mac Barnett's latest will be sure to please fans of Dav Pilkey's The Adventures of Captain Underpants and Dog Man: The Supa Epic Collection: From the Creator of Captain Underpants (Dog Man 1-6 Boxed Set). I mean, how many characters out there share their licorice with the Queen of England?

See more top-selling giggle fest books by Mac Barnett here.