COSMO AND THE ROBOT
by Brian Pinkney & illustrated by Brian Pinkney
This master of scratchboard crafts another fantasyadventure a la his Adventures of Sparrowboy (1997), this one set on Mars. Having taken apart both pesky big sister Jewel's Easy-Bake Oven and an abandoned Mars Rover, with the help of tools from his new `Super Solar System Utility Belt,` young Cosmo is fully prepared to save Jewel from a deranged robot, then expertly fix it up (with Jewel's help) into a big metal playmate. Coloring his scratchboard art with swirls of paint, Pinkney puts his bickering siblings into bubble-helmeted pressure suits, placing them on a desolate, marmalade-hued Martian landscape. There's not much science in this science fiction, but Batman's utility belt has nothing on Cosmo's, and young readers will cheer his mechanical aptitude as much as his heroism. (Picture book. 6-8)