Niños artesanos

November 1, 2013

Gr 5-8-The major problem with this hi/lo offering is that the facts are presented in a dense, dry manner and the fiction attempts to create excitement, but mostly falls flat. In a vague future world, Sid, who is bored in school (but does want to learn), amuses himself by taking complicated electronic things apart and "rebuilding" them, making them useless. He is rewarded for his destructive behavior when his mother enrolls him in a private science high school on Goddard Island. This man-made island, named for the man who is credited with launching the first liquid fueled rocket, has a particle accelerator buried at some safe distance underground (on the seismically active coast of California). It has a neat, collegelike setting where students are encouraged to explore what they love and everyone loves learning. The dull plot follows Sid as he is transformed from a student who daydreams and hates school to an engaged member of the class. This book aims to explain middle school science topics in an engaging, plot driven way but misses on all counts. And, beyond that, the science is treated carelessly: in a book about bees, drone and worker are used interchangeably; it claims Homo sapiens evolved from Neanderthals; they clone that Neanderthal to a fully mature state in a semester; the climbing terms used are made up; and the words "micro," "reduction," and "miniaturized" are used without regard to their scientific meanings.-Leila Sterman, Montana State University Library, Bozeman

Copyright 2013 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2013
By the early 22nd century, postal robots deliver packages via 3-D printers and scientists shrink themselves to study microbiology, but no one's solved colony collapse disorder. Sidney Jamison's crushingly bored by the curriculum at Bleaker High School, where they're still studying butterfly metamorphosis. When he's tapped to attend the legendary Sci Hi, a sort of Hogwarts for science geeks, he leaps at the opportunity. Once there, he joins forces with newfound buddies Ron and Hermione--er, Hari and Penny. The students are shrunk so they can enter a beehive in Japan to study bees there (a different species from the one suffering from colony collapse disorder, which is never indicated in the book). They seem to be resistant to varroa mites, a suspect in CCD now and evidently in the future. Mild adventures ensue. The veneer of futuristic details ("voxpods" are thinly disguised smartphones; "lethal" has taken the place of "awesome") do little to disguise this series opener's formulaic nature. Still, formula or no, the characters are agreeable enough, if extremely young for their ages, and the focus on science is nice to see. But it is too bad that key technological advances, most notably the shrinking device, are given only hand-waving explanations rather than real scientific grounding. Perhaps most readers won't notice this, but in a book that seeks to celebrate science, it's a shame to see it treated casually. Apt for scientifically minded Magic Treehouse graduates. (Science fantasy. 8-12)

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