Talk about some major childhood nostalgia! This is Carmen Sandiego’s origin story — a bit slow at first, but a fun read nonetheless! Ages 9 and up.

This was a really fun book. I was taken aback for the first part of the book because a girl learning to be a thief wasn't quite what I wanted my kids to hear. In the end the book redeemed it's self and I enjoyed the story. My 9yo boys loved it!!!

IM IN LOVE WITH THIS BOOK

Adapted from the screenplay for the Netflix animated series, this book faithfully depicts the origin story of Carmen Sandiego. Most of the story is told as a flashback of Carmen’s time in a thieving school run by V.I.L.E. (Villains' International League of Evil) and includes most of the instructors, agents, and students that are depicted on the TV show including Professor Maelstrom, Coach Brunt, Dr. Bellum, Countess Cleo, Graham/Gray, Cookie Booker, Tigress, El Topo, Le Chevre, Paper Star, Mime Bomb, and of course, Player. We get to see how and why she becomes such a master criminal through her classes and interactions with other students. But, more importantly, we see how she comes to realize she doesn’t really belong on that side of the law and begins to use her skills to become a Robin Hood-like figure.

The book was fairly fast-paced with interesting characters but it does read much like watching animated action. For example, in one sequence, Carmen hears a crossbow bolt being fired at her but somehow has time to run to a wall, grab a shield from a display and manage to block the bolt before it reaches her. You just have to go with it.

Whether you’re picking this up for nostalgia reasons like I did or reading it for the pleasure of seeing how a young girl learns to stand up for herself and her beliefs, it’s a fun read.

I played the Carmen Sandiego game when I was younger and thought it would be cool to find out a little more about her.

I enjoyed getting to see how she grew up. She the book mainly takes place in a special kind of school which is a setting I always like. Given her specific set of skills, it is also a setting I haven’t had the pleasure to read about until now. The story was done well even though I thought it was going to be cheesy at first. You can definitely tell it was made for a younger audience, but enjoyable all the same!

A fun take, but it's so similar to the show that I feel like that held it back a little. It was still great to get a little more into the character's thoughts than the show did.

As a fan of the Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego games as a child, I was pretty excited to hear that they’d brought her back as a Netflix series with companion books. I thought this book was fine, but not great.

We start with Carmen mid-heist, being observed by Interpol. She successfully pulls off the heist and gets on a train, where she runs into someone from her past. Intriguing, yes. Then, we get 100 pages of flashbacks to Carmen’s time in school. While I understand this is a necessary set up for future stories, it wasn’t that interesting. The writing was dry. Carmen’s life at VILE’s academy for up and coming thieves was fairly predictable. And the flashbacks dragged on. I wanted to know what Carmen was doing now and why, not what she had done/how she was trained. Eventually, we caught back up to present day, then promptly flashed back to where we had left the school story part of this.

Middle grade readers will probably enjoy this book more than I did. The school story side of it is intriguing and pitched the right way will definitely draw readers in. However, the beginning is misleading and leaves the reader a bit disappointed to hear so much of Carmen’s past and so very little of her present. I’m hoping that future books will be more engaging. Like I said, the book was fine, but not great.