A promising first offer in a series that offers plenty of appeal for middle-grade and middle school readers.
Sent to spend the summer with a mad-scientist uncle in California, 11-year-old twins Nick and Tesla explore a mysterious, no-longer-abandoned mansion with gadgets they invent and readers can build.
In this fast-paced adventure in which the twins inadvertently foil a kidnapping, there are further mysteries: Why is that black SUV following them, and just what are their parents doing in Uzbekistan? There’s danger lurking: a pair of Rottweiler guard dogs, a neighbor girl who stands in the window with a sign that says “Go Away,” and two men who don’t want intruders. Their uncle’s lab, with its “Keep Out” sign, is full of intriguing and useful—if possibly explosive—material. Tesla is a girl with guts and good ideas; Nick is equally clever but more cautious. The instructions for making a rocket launcher, a robo-cat, a semi-invisible nighttime van tracker, an alarm and an electromagnet are clear and the diagrams helpful. Opportunities for humor abound, especially in the character of the distracted inventor uncle, first seen covered with sticky orange slime. Art includes circuit board plans and circuit diagrams; pencil illustrations show the twins and their friends, DeMarco and Silas. A sequel, Nick and Tesla’s Robot Army Rampage, is scheduled for 2014.
A promising first offer in a series that offers plenty of appeal for middle-grade and middle school readers. (Adventure. 9-13)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-59474-648-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Quirk Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Charming, poignant, and thoughtfully woven.
An aspiring scientist and a budding artist become friends and help each other with dream projects.
Unfolding in mid-1980s Sacramento, California, this story stars 12-year-olds Rosalind and Benjamin as first-person narrators in alternating chapters. Ro’s father, a fellow space buff, was killed by a drunk driver; the rocket they were working on together lies unfinished in her closet. As for Benji, not only has his best friend, Amir, moved away, but the comic book holding the clue for locating his dad is also missing. Along with their profound personal losses, the protagonists share a fixation with the universe’s intriguing potential: Ro decides to complete the rocket and hopes to launch mementos of her father into outer space while Benji’s conviction that aliens and UFOs are real compels his imagination and creativity as an artist. An accident in science class triggers a chain of events forcing Benji and Ro, who is new to the school, to interact and unintentionally learn each other’s secrets. They resolve to find Benji’s dad—a famous comic-book artist—and partner to finish Ro’s rocket for the science fair. Together, they overcome technical, scheduling, and geographical challenges. Readers will be drawn in by amusing and fantastical elements in the comic book theme, high emotional stakes that arouse sympathy, and well-drawn character development as the protagonists navigate life lessons around grief, patience, self-advocacy, and standing up for others. Ro is biracial (Chinese/White); Benji is White.
Charming, poignant, and thoughtfully woven. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-300888-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
The intelligences here may be (mostly) artificial, but the feelings are genuine and deep.
A Mars rover discovers that it has a heart to go with its two brains.
Warga follows her cybernetic narrator from first awareness to final resting place—and stony indeed will be any readers who remain unmoved by the journey. Though unable to ask questions of the hazmats (named for their suits) assembling it in a NASA lab, the rover, dubbed Resilience by an Ohio sixth grader, gets its first inklings of human feelings from two workers who talk to it, play it music, and write its pleasingly bug-free code. Other machines (even chatty cellphones) reject the notion that there’s any real value to emotions. But the longer those conversations go, the more human many start sounding, particularly after Res lands in Mars’ Jezero Crater and, with help from Fly, a comically excitable drone, and bossy satellite Guardian, sets off on twin missions to look for evidence of life and see if an older, silenced rover can be brought back online. Along with giving her characters, human and otherwise, distinct voices and engaging personalities, the author quietly builds solid relationships (it’s hardly a surprise when, after Fly is downed in a dust storm, Res trundles heroically to the rescue in defiance of orders) on the way to rest and joyful reunions years later. A subplot involving brown-skinned, Arabic-speaking NASA coder Rania unfolds through her daughter Sophia’s letters to Res.
The intelligences here may be (mostly) artificial, but the feelings are genuine and deep. (afterword, resources) (Science fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-311392-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 12, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
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