  | Drake Equation Author: King, Bart | |
| Price: $6.50 | ||
Summary:
Noah Grow is a birdwatcher who is on a quest to find a Wood Duck, but instead finds a strange, bedazzled disc. Noah and his best friends, Jason and Jenny, soon discover that the mysterious disc gives Noah peculiar powers. As things go from odd to outrageous, Noah is swept up in a storm of intergalactic intrigue and middle school mayhem.
| Accelerated Reader Information: Interest Level: MG Reading Level: 4.60 Points: 9.0 Quiz: 182265 |
Reviews:
Kirkus Reviews (-) (03/01/16)
School Library Journal (-) (02/01/16)
Booklist (04/15/16)
The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books (A) (00/05/16)
Full Text Reviews:
School Library Journal - 02/01/2016 Gr 5–8—Bird-watching meets science fiction in this middle grade adventure. Noah Grow loves to watch birds and is determined to spot a rare wood duck. Using the Drake Equation, a carefully crafted mathematical formula, he has figured out where to look. While getting off the bus to look for the bird, he runs into his bully, and things do not go well. Noah is forced to run away into the woods, where he falls and lands next to a mysterious disc. When he shows it to his friends, they discover it has powers. Soon, Noah and his friends are involved in an intergalactic adventure they won't forget. While the book has an interesting premise, it ultimately falls flat. King relies heavily on footnotes for backstory and character profiles, which break the pace and may turn off the intended audience. The novel also suffers from an overuse of potty humor, which, though appealing to younger readers, may serve to induce eye rolls in older middle grade readers. VERDICT Not quite short or fact-paced enough to pull in reluctant readers, and not sophisticated enough for die-hard science fiction fans, this book will likely have trouble finding an audience.—Patrick Tierney, Dr. Martin Luther King Elementary School, Providence - Copyright 2016 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission.
Booklist - 04/15/2016 Noah Grow—seventh-grader and avid birder—finds far more than a rare bird when he hops off the school bus one afternoon. Aside from a run-in with the class bully and a serendipitous black-swift sighting, Noah pockets a curious hockey-puck-shaped object. Later, while showing the puck to his best friends, twins Jason and Jenny, it activates and causes ice to shoot out of Noah’s hands. Clearly, this powerful puck comes from another planet. On the heels of finding what Noah dubs the “quincunx,” strange things start happening around town—freak accidents, an earthquake, a forest fire—and Noah knows that he must use this alien device to put things right, and maybe even save some birds in the process. This zany tale never quite takes flight, as it gets weighed down by its own quirkiness. New characters are introduced via bird-species profiles, which interrupt rather than complement the narrative, but readers after funny sf fare may enjoy the book’s absurdities, alien misunderstandings, and wordplay. - Copyright 2016 Booklist.
