Giving the Chip the Slip: The Return of the Homework Machine by Dan Gutman

POLICE CHIEF REBECCA FISH, GRAND CANYON, ARIZONA:

Is this thing workin'? Okay. Good. We're gonna need a lotta tape for this one.

Well, remember what happened the last time with those crazy kids. It was in all the papers.

Just to review, these four youngsters from the Grand Canyon School down the road built some machine that did their homework for 'em automatically. Smart kids. Good kids, down deep. And then, for some reason, they built themselves a catapult and chucked the whole darn contraption into the canyon. Strangest thing I ever seen.

Those kids from Dan Gutman's best-selling The Homework Machine are back. They're sixth graders now, made more savvy by their escapade with Brenton Damagatchi's amazing computer which spit out their homework, error-free, in warp time. And they will need all that sixth-grade savvy this time, because the homework machine, that is, its evil core, is back to haunt them.

When the kids--Sam, Judy, Kelsey, and Brenton--realized that having their work done for them was more trouble, ethically and otherwise, than it was worth, they came to the hard decision that the homework machine had to go. But being smart kids with a quirky sense of humor, they decided to get rid of it in a big way--building a medieval catapult and pitching into the Grand Canyon, conveniently nearby.

But now Brenton, the brains behind the caper, has a new worry. The seemingly indestructible main chip which powered the thing has been found still glowing on the canyon floor, and a menacing conman and a cadre of Asian gangsters are closing in on the valuable property with nefarious and threatening plans for its use. The group gets together again to try to retrieve the chip while keeping it out of the hands of evil forces, all without blowing their cover and without winding up on the canyon floor themselves.

And if the kids do get that chip back, how can they end its malevolent history for good? Well, suffice it to say that the guys' hobby of building more and more powerful model rockets comes in handy, and what's left of the homework machine gets a real out-of-this-world sendoff.

JUDY DOUGLAS, GRADE 6:

The Canyonistas were coming from all over, and another police car pulled up, and those gangsters were coming toward us, and everybody was yelling and shouting at each other. I just covered my ears.

BRENTON DAMAGATCHI, GRADE 6:

And I pushed the button.

Dan Gutman's Return of the Homework Machine, (Simon & Schuster, 2009) again narrated cleverly through Police Chief Fish's case report testimony tapes by each of the kids, is a funny and fast-paced sequel which will please fans of the first book. As usual, Gutman's writing is appealing, with snappy dialog and sympathetic characters, told with wit and with heart. As School Library Journal said of the first book, it's "...a dramatic and thought-provoking story with a strong message about honesty and friendship."

The DaVinci Machine: Nick of Time by Ted Bell

And there, hanging by his heels among the shattered rigging and tattered canvas, with the acrid smell of cordite stinging his nostrils, the oddest recollection popped unbidden into his upside down head. A memory from a childhood book, the matchboy who lost his arm to a French cannonball. But still he'd bent down to pick up his still-burning match from the deck with his remaining arm, touched it to the gun's powder hole, and then laughed at the thunderous roar his cannon made. Laughed!

Hanging in the rigging, his comrade dead and the cannonballs flying, Nick had no idea what fate had in store for him.... But he knew he, Nick McIver, had done one quite amazing thing in this life.

He had laughed in the face of danger!

It was the last thing Nick remembered before the upper third of the foretopmast, smashed by a thirty-two-pound ball, came hurtling down from above and struck his head a horrible blow.

How does the twelve-year-old son of a lighthouse keeper, a lifelong resident of a sleepy community on a remote Channel Island, find himself in the thick of a naval battle with a turncoat pirate fighting for the Napoleonic French Navy in a to-the-death battle with Nick's own great-great-great grandfather, captain of HMS Merlin?

Well may you ask.

When sea-struck Nick McIver finds a strangely new-looking sea chest washed up on the beach of little Greybeard Island, its mysterious contents lead him into the kind of adventures Nick had poured over in the many accounts of Lord Nelson's epic naval battles in which his ancestor served. It is 1939, and Messersmitts patrol the skies over the French coast and a giant U-Boat, the secret weapon of the Nazis, is spotted by Nick as he sails his little boat, the Petrel, along the treacherous island coast. Nick learns that the chest contains something of great value to William Blood, a seeming seadog from a previous era who appears as if from thin air to demand it on pain of death.

With the aid of his friend, innkeeper Gunner, a naval gunnery veteran of the Great War, Nick and his six-year-old sister Kate secretly sail into the coastal bastion of Lord Hawke, who alone, Nick guesses, is the only one who can open the sea chest and explain the strange golden globe preserved within. There Nick learns that the globe is itself one of two time machines created by Leonardo da Vinci, the other being in the unfortunate possession of the evil Billy Blood himself, who uses his machine to travel through the centuries, kidnapping youngsters, including the two children of Lord Hawke himself, and enriching himself through the ransom paid by wealthy parents.

What follows is a sweeping, swashbuckling, corker of an adventure story told in the time of two great conflicts, the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, and the beginning of World War II in 1939. While Nick and Lord Hawke time travel back to to the nineteenth century naval clash to rescue Nick's namesake, his great-great-great grandfather, whose ship is breached below the waterline and sinking at the hands of the nefarious Captain Blood, little Kate and England's top spy Hobbes set forth from Lord Hawke's coastal redoubt to deliver Nick's description of the Nazi super submarine to the secret accomplices of Winston Churchill, whose goal is to turn the pacifist British government by convincing them of the Nazi peril growing off their southern shore.

In alternating chapters, the readers see Nick, directing the Merlin's escape through the coastal waters of Greybeard Island known only to him, while Hobbes, with Kate's steely and invaluable assistance, must convince their Nazi captors that he is her father, a disgruntled English lighthouse keeper who is willing to spy for the Axis for a certain sum of money.

Best-selling author Ted Bell's first venture into children's literature, Nick of Time, keeps these dual plot lines humming along with constant close calls and heroic acts which prevent page-turning readers from questioning this audacious plot line too closely. Nick McIver is an old-fashioned boy hero right out of Robert Louis Stevenson--courageous and undaunted by the challenges of any century, a boy whose greatest desire is to laugh in the face of danger. Filled with colorful and well-drawn villains and heroes and chockful of historical detail, this novel will leave suspense, science fiction, and historical fiction fans calling for a quickly delivered sequel. Those adventure-seeking guys who complain that there are not enough books written for a real boy should find plenty to satisfy their danger lust in this heroic-sized novel.

Adventure for Boys: Night of the Howling Dogs by Graham Salisbury

With the publication of his recent YA novel,Graham Salisbury has moved into that rarified group of writers led by Gary Paulsen who can construct riveting page-turning adventure thrillers for young male readers without any slighting of the deep emotional and moral life of his main characters.

In Night of the Howling Dogs, things start innocently enough when a mixed troop of older Eagle Scout candidates and younger beginners assemble for a hiking-camping trip from Hilo to a remote volcanic beach, Halape, in the looming shadow of the Kilauea volcano. Sixteen-year-old Dylan and his best friend Casey Bellows, son of their leader, plan to share a tent and the responsibility for the younger rookie scouts Tad, Zach, and Sam, along with fifteen-year-old Mike and his dad, assistant leader Reverend Paia.

Things get tense for Dylan when he learns that a scruffy older boy who has attended a few troop meetings is also coming along. Dylan has already had a run-in with the tough and almost out-of-control Louie, who harrasses him and challenges Dylan's new role as patrol leader at every opportunity. Still, the troop makes it through the hike in grueling heat and sets up camp near the shade of a few palm trees along the shore. Although a small shark seems to be patrolling the beach ominously, Louie dares Dylan to swim past him to a small island. Dylan reluctantly takes the challenge, noting that Louis seems fearless but is a poor swimmer.

As the guys set up to make dinner, they are joined by three native cowboys on a fishing expedition. Around the campfire that night, the three Hawaiians ask about two wild dogs spotted in the distance, and one claims that the smaller white dog is the ominous spirit of Pele, only seen before disasters.

That night a violent earthquake shakes the boys awake and just as they recover from being tossed onto the ground, an avalanche of boulders from the mountain above nearly buries the beach and the boys beneath the rubble. Soon a tsunami follows, in which Dylan almost drowns and most of the troop go missing. Surprisingly, Dylan finds that Louie is the most courageous of the survivors, and with him Dylan finds the strength to go back to find his fellow scouts and their leaders.

Based on the true story of a Boy Scout troop involved in the earthquake and tsunami of November 29, 1975, which submerged much of southwest Hawaii under fifty feet of water in five surges, the author draws upon his cousin's account to create the character of Dylan. Into the realistic account inspired by this actual event, Hawaiian-born Salisbury weaves the mythology of the region to recount an outdoor survival story that is absolutely gripping.

Salisbury, who has carried off Newbery Honor and Scott O'Dell Historical Fiction Awards for his earlier books, reviewed in my previous posts here, here, and here, has a rare gift for crafting irresistable plot lines, rich in local color and characterizations, which deal with the psychology of the adolescent male seriously and empathetically.