  | Full Text Reviews: School Library Journal - 07/01/2017 Gr 5–8—More than 100 eye-catching full-color illustrations showcase this fantasy's diverse cast of characters and their world of seagoing dinosaurs, horse-drawn carriages, flying skateboards, and giant robots. Thirteen-year-old Diego Ribera lives in the coastal city of New Chicago on an Earth cataclysmically transformed by the Time Collision. Continents have moved, and the Vastlantic Ocean has overtaken the eastern third of the United States. The Collision brought several periods of time together, and the resulting mixture of animals, people, and technology from many eras has created a politically unstable world. A faction from ancient Rome kidnaps the protagonist's father as part of a violent plot to reverse the Collision, and in the ensuing chaos a pirate ship picks up Diego and three companions. The rest of this sprawling novel follows the newly dubbed Rangers of the Vastlantic as they attempt to rescue the teen's father and defeat the Romans. The writing is less polished than the illustrations, and a character list would have been helpful for readers trying to keep track of the massive cast. While the racial diversity of the main characters is welcome, it's disappointing that the only black female Ranger ends up as the pirate ship's cook while others become a navigator, pilot, and ship's engineer. VERDICT The stunning artwork is the real star here. Sure to be popular with middle school fantasy readers.—Beth Wright Redford, Richmond Elementary School Library, VT - Copyright 2017 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission. Booklist - 08/01/2017 Using a narrative technique similar to Selznick’s The Invention of Hugo Cabret (2007), Baltazar, a concept artist for Pixar and other studios, mixes pages of print with frequent full- or double-page painted scenes, often in brief sequences, that cinematically advance the plot. The resulting brick opens a series featuring four kids tasked with saving the world—or rather, their world: a “Time Collision” left Earth’s surface kaleidoscopically fragmented into select eras, and every kid born post-Collision will vanish if a scheme to restore the original time line comes to fruition. Hotshot gearhead Diego Ribera works out personal frictions with his compatriots while helping to rescue his kidnapped dad, Santiago, a gifted engineer. The multicultural fledgling Rangers are outfitted with steam-powered antigravity skateboards, giant mechanical robots, and mystic powers and sent to battle prehistoric monsters and WWII-era Messerschmitts in elaborately detailed fantasy settings. Readers able to roll with the mise-en-scène’s thoroughly arbitrary character will be rewarded with an uncomplicated adventure elevated by banter and always headed directly toward the next violent clash. - Copyright 2017 Booklist. Loading...
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