  | Winter of the robots Author: Scaletta, Kurtis | |
| Price: $6.50 | ||
Summary:
There's something lurking in the junkyard in Jim Knox's neighborhood, and it's up to him and his friends (and science-fair rivals) to put their robot-building skills together in order to defeat it.
| Accelerated Reader Information: Interest Level: MG Reading Level: 3.90 Points: 7.0 Quiz: 161866 | Reading Counts Information: Interest Level: 6-8 Reading Level: 4.30 Points: 13.0 Quiz: 61946 | |
Reviews:
Kirkus Reviews (09/01/13)
Booklist (+) (12/01/13)
The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books (12/13)
Full Text Reviews:
Bulletin for the Center... - 12/01/2013 Jim’s sick of playing wingman on his buddy Oliver’s robot science fair projects, so he eagerly accepts pretty classmate Rochelle’s invitation to work with her on otter observations instead. He discovers all too soon that Rocky is really after his access to the cameras his father sells in his home security business to better observe the otters, but Jim nonetheless delivers and helps install the goods at the riverside junkyard, the site of the otter project. Things take a turn when classmate Dmitri steals the cameras, the cameras are then stolen by someone else, Dmitri goes missing, and the junkyard turns out be the burned out site of a government project on military robotics. The original project may have shut down, but some of the surviving abandoned robots have reprogrammed themselves with a mission to destroy, and it’s up to the kids to pool their robotics skills to take out the metal warriors and save the world, or at least their corner of North Minneapolis. Scaletta plays to middle-grade gearheads, delivering the expected epic junkyard battle between marauding monsters and savvy kids, but he crafts a solid mystery, involving the death of a local eccentric and some high end auto theft, that will also lure in the less technically inclined. EB - Copyright 2013 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois.
Booklist - 12/01/2013 *Starred Review* The probability of his temperamental dad finding out that Jim has borrowed several high-tech security cameras for a science fair project turns out to be the least of his worries in this offbeat thriller. Set up in a seedy North Minneapolis junkyard near the river in hopes of observing otters, the cameras immediately disappear after a flash of weird footage. Should Jim and his seventh-grade friends believe the claim of Ted, a decrepit local? He says the yard, the site of an experimental robot lab that was destroyed years ago in a huge explosion, is haunted. Told in a spare, matter-of-fact narrative, this packs the space between the lines with humor, drama, romantic tension, and deftly delivered insight into the characters of a diverse, well-developed cast. The tale pitches Jim and his classmates (with significant help from his smarter little sister, Penny) into designing, constructing, and testing homemade battle robots both as plan B for the science fair and as a later entry in a competition at a nearby mall. The latter hard-fought contest presages a similar but much larger scale climactic bashfest in the wake of revelations that the junkyard is indeed inhabited—by feral, self-programming robots capable of violence and murder. Scaletta amps up the voltage with suspense and excitement, but he also seamlessly integrates family issues and peer dynamics and cybernetic feats that seem only slightly futuristic. - Copyright 2013 Booklist.
