Supersquirrel and the Crazy Rain Maker by Russell Punter. Illus. by Josh Cleland

The Animal Action Squad is a top secret organisation of superheroes dedicated to fighting crime, and Supersquirrel is one of its operatives. With her undercover occupation as a taxi driver, and her superpowers including being able to fly extremely quickly, x-ray vision and superhearing, she has to outwit the fiendish criminal mastermind Dr Drizzle and his sidekick Rocky who have stolen a top secret formula meaning danger if it gets in the wrong hands.

But she can't do it alone - she needs the reader's help, and this is what sets this remarkable little book aside from so many. Part stepping-stone novel, part graphic novel, it is packed full of puzzles and clues that the reader needs to solve, making it as interactive as a print text can be. Being directly involved as a character means the reader has to engage with the story, the text and its illustrations rather than a skim-read-what's next book. It can be read alone or shared as participants stop to consider what they have learned from a particular excerpt and how it fits into the overall scheme of things, encouraging deeper thinking, reflection and synthesising information. Although it doesn't require making decisions to determine the path of the story, it could lead to an interest in the choose-your-own-adventure genre.

This is the first in this series that I predict will become a must-have as it reaches out to newly independent readers, including those who are beginning to think that reading doesn't really hold much for them. So much more fun than pressing or tapping buttons just to accumulate a high score. A book trailer is available.

Themes: Puzzles, Super heroes.

Barbara Braxton