**Highly Confidential** Your Alex Rider mission: Celebrate 20 years of Stormbreaker!

Teachers dreaming of a secret mission, it’s time for your first assignment!

2020 marks the 20th anniversary of Stormbreaker, the first book in Anthony Horowitz’s bestselling Alex Rider series, and Walker Books are inviting you and your class to join in the celebrations…

To kick things off, Walker has created a brand new Alex Rider Short Story Competition exclusively for children aged between 8-11 years old, open for entries from Thursday 13 February 2020 until Friday 26 June 2020.

Stories should be a maximum of 500 words and should be inspired by Alex Rider’s adventures.

Listen to Anthony Horowitz himself introducing the competition!

The winning story will appear on the Alex Rider website and the winner’s school will receive 10 signed copies of the brand new mission in the Alex Rider series, Nightshade, as well as Alex Rider secrete message pens, bookmarks, posters and stickers!

Five runner-up schools will each receive a signed copy of Nightshade, plus a class set of Alex Rider secret message pens, bookmarks and stickers.

It’s the perfect opportunity to step into Alex’s world…the action, adrenaline and adventure starts here!

Alex Rider: Free KS2 resources

Encourage pupils to become Reading Spies and to take their writing to the next level with the Alex Rider series by Anthony Horowitz – suitable for children ages 9+.

The lesson ideas in the Teachers’ Pack created by Walker include free extracts that have been taken directly from Stormbreaker, as well as corresponding discussion questions and cross-curricular activities that stimulate ideas around important themes in the series.

The activities encourage descriptive and creative writing at KS2/3, including: exploring different genres, writing strong lead characters, devising mission files, developing settings, and creating pacey stories. The perfect preparation for young short story writers!

Don’t forget to submit your pupils’ creations into the short story competition, which is open until Fri 26 June. You can find out more details for how to enter here: alexrider.com/story. In the meantime, share any work completed using the Stormbreaker resources on Twitter with the hashtag #AlexRider20 and by tagging @WalkerBooksUK.

Happy writing!

What’s coming in the Alex Rider series in 2020?

A 20th anniversary edition of Stormbreaker is out now, and includes the first chapter of the 13th Alex Rider mission, Nightshade, which is out 2 April.

Discover more about the Alex Rider series here.