Into the Light! The Jamie Drake Equation by Christopher Edge

I hear a beep from my cell phone. I see the low battery icon. Mom will start to worry if she can't get hold of me. I look around and my eyes fall on Professor Forster's laptop. A USB cable dangles emptily.

With a quick glance over my shoulder, I plug the cable into my phone. But as the USB connects with the familiar three-note sound, I see a pop-up appear on the phone's screen:

DATALINK CONNECTED
INCOMING TRANSMISSION FROM
HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE
DOWNLOADING TO DEVICE.

Oh, no. Panicking, I make a grab for my phone, yanking the USB cable out.

Jamie Drake lives on Planet Earth, the only one in our solar system in the "Goldilocks Zone," habitable for humans. His dad is an astronaut at the International Space Station, about to launch laser-powered nano-drones toward the star Tau Ceti to probe for intelligent extra-terrestrial life on a planet in its orbit, and Jamie's whole school is avidly awaiting watching his famous father in dramatic style do it all on television.

Jamie's got it made for popularity in sixth grade. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, first, Jamie can't do his math homework, a whole page of pre-algebra equations. And then his mom tells him that she and his father are planning to divorce--just as soon as he returns to Earth. It's all too much. His father is a celebrity, in orbit on the International Space Station. But Jamie can't help resenting his dad for being where he is and who he is, and for not being what Jamie needs at that time. He's too unhappy to concentrate on math. His life is a mess. But when he runs out of his house, holding back tears, something happens....

Jamie grabs his battered cell phone and heads out for walk, ending at a supposedly closed public observatory. But the door is open, and Jamie's curiosity is aroused. He meets up with a private SETI researcher inside who is quietly using the telescope for her own search for extra-terrestrials. She explains that she's waiting for a download from the Hubble telescope, and while she's taking care of some "technical difficulties," Jamie decides to charge his phone, plugging it into a USB port on her computer. What happens next is something that, despite his father's work, Jamie could never have imagined.

I hear a buzzing sound. It's my cell phone. I look at the screen. Then I see it. At the corner of the screen is a new icon. It looks like a golden spiral and it seems to spin in time with the phone's vibration. I try to drag it out of the way, but it won't move at all.

There's a strange tingle in my finger. A number appears. 0

Then another number appears, followed by another and another.

0 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 89 144 233 377....

Yes, it's a Fibonacci sequence from an alien intelligence probing to see if it is in touch with an intelligent lifeform on Earth. Not only is Jamie enabled to do his math homework, but the screen reveals that the alien he calls "Buzz" is a member of the Hi've, beings who have had to leave their own plane of existence and become pure energy by "swarming into the light."

And when a sudden massive solar flare strands his own father hopelessly in space, Jamie has no hope beyond following Buzz's instructions to save his father.

"YOU MUST STEP INTO THE LIGHT. LIGHT IS ETERNAL.

It's a crackerjack of a premise, in Christopher Edge's The Jamie Drake Equation (Delacorte Press, 2018 Am. Ed.). Despite its au currant theory and technical devices, this middle reader science fiction book has much in common with the plot and theme of Madeleine L'Engle's classic A Wrinkle in Time (Time Quintet), as Jamie must call on his own courage and inner light, and with the guidance of his own ET, travel through time and space to save his father. Like Meg Murray, Jamie Drake is a real kid with real concerns who follows his own heart into a plane of existence he never dreamed of, all the while grounded in his love of his earthly family and life. Author Edge skillfully draws young readers into the storyline, seamlessly melding both science and spirit. "With solid science and believable family conflicts, this will be very satisfying to readers whose wishful thinking can suspend disbelief," Kirkus Reviews reports.

Bot Glut: Robots Rule: Lots of Bots by C.J. Richards

A section of the butler-bot's head melted away, and a moth-bot launched itself into the air as the robot began to spin in a circle. "Foreign Body contamination!" it said, and drove itself into the swimming pool.

George dropped all but one of the towels he was holding. He twisted and hurled the towel over the moth-bot, trapping it on the ground. George brought his foot down on top of it with a satisfying crunch.

Now he had proof to show Professor Droid that he was right about Micron and his robotic bugs. He leaned down to gather the pieces carefully in the towel.

A buzzing noise at his back sent a tingle up his spine. He felt the air go cold as a strange shadow spread over the ground. George turned slowly and found himself face-to-face with a massive swarm of deadly moth-bots.

After his near-destruction ordered by the evil genius Dr. Micron, the cyber-talented George Gearing is at last beginning his promised internship at TinkerTech, which is in the throes of the upcoming release of their hot new product, the Mod, something like a super iPod married to Google glasses, but after a series of suspicious accidents, George finds himself shunted off by Professor Droid to cleaning detail under the supervision of OCD-Bot, an obsessive-compulsive cleaner who speaks only in rhymes. Even more annoying is George's special robot Jackbot's romantic obsession with George's nemesis, Patricia Volt's personal bot, Cookie.

But OCD-Bot's janitorial duties allow access to every part of TinkerTech, and George manages to get inside the abandoned office of the imprisoned Dr. Micron to download information about his parents, former TinkerTech employees who disappeared after an unexplained accident. and uncovers a link to the secret Project Mercury. In trouble for being AWOL from his cleaning assignment, George is demoted to work with assembly bots, packaging the Mod in mailing containers in preparation for its media launch the next day.

But people at TinkerTech who are beta testing the Mod are behaving strangely, even the CEO himself, Professor Droid, father of George's best human friend, Ann Droid, who seems to be somehow mesmerized. Suspicious, George swipes a Mod, puts in the contact lenses that form its screen and the earbuds in his ears, and finds out what the Mod can do (besides a constant individualized entertainment and news-feed)--receive alpha waves which effectively suspend the conscious mind and turns humans themselves into robots--bots controlled by (whom else?), Dr. Micron, a sort of nefarious Steve Jobs on steroids whose plan is to control the world through his purported entertainment device.

When Micron discovers that his plan is again compromised by George Gearing, he unlooses his deadly moth-bots and threatens to destroy George's parents, held in suspended animation in the underground Project Mercury bunker into which he lures George, Ann, and Jackbot.

It's a classic BWWAAA-HA-HAAAA! moment for Micron.

"If I could save my atomic data indefinitely, I could live forever. I could be a god!" Micron raves maniacally.

For kids who liked the non-stop chases, bot battles, and bad-guy comeuppances of Book One in this series, The Junkyard Bot: Robots Rule, Book 1, there's plenty more where that came from in C. J. Richards' second installment, Lots of Bots (Robots Rule) (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015).

Richard's text is easy, action-packed, and studded with humor, especially in the character of OCD-Bot ("A break is what I do not take!) and the lovelorn Jackbot's AI-assisted yearnings for the truly heartless Cookie. But in the final chapters Richards also introduces more serious themes--George's longing for his parents, the role of friendship--human and robot, and the very real fear abroad in the land of intrusive digital media which threatens of overwhelm the human side of us all. With Dr. Micron still a force and the quest to locate his parents' atomic data to restore them to life, George Gearing has his work cut out for him in the no-doubt forthcoming Book Three of the series.

Zap Flap! Frank Einstein and the Electro-Finger by Jon Scieszka

Frank Einstein quickly slides the lever up on the Electro-Finger. "Maybe just a bit more power!"

The raft spirals deeper into the whirlpool above the dam. Klink's webcam eye twirls in circles. "BEEEEEP!" "Badang badang badang!" bleeps Klank.

Frank analyses the situation. "So much for THAT hypothesis."

Watson pulls the tape of his mouth. "Hypothesis? I've got a hypothesis. We are goners!"

The raft spins crazily around the inside of the whirlpool.

"OK! Electrical energy didn't work," says Frank. "Let's use Newton's Third Law!"

When Frank's arch-nemesis T. Edison destroys all sources of electricity except his hydroelectric dam, prices of service double in Midville and hit his fix-it Gramdpa's wallet hard. But Frank Einstein, boy inventor, has a plan, based on Nicola Tesla's unrealized prediction that electricity can be generated by harnessing the force from the earth's magnetic field.

Magnetism comes from moving electrons moving in huge loops.

What are moving electrons called? Electricity.

Invisible. Wireless. Electricity.

With help from his artificial intelligence robot Klink and his mechano-robot Klank, and his nature scientist classmate janegoodall, Frank sets up a demonstration of his wireless electro-finger at free movie night when most of the Midvillians are watching an old Tarzan movie at the drive-in. The demo is a success, powering the projector, sound system, and lights, but T.E. and his finger-spelling chimpanzee henchman manage to short out the town's beloved mechanical elephant Topsy and persuade the townspeople that Frank's Electro-Finger is at fault.

But Frank's loyal but non-scientific sidekick Watson, has a hot idea, to follow the energy right to the one place making electricity--the turbine beneath Edison's dam, and when Frank and Klink and Klank go looking for Watson, they find themselves prisoners of T. Edison in a rubber raft racing toward the intake valve and spinning down, down, down into that vortex toward certain destruction and victory for the power-mad T. Edison. Even Frank's magnetism theories fail him.

But not Klank's loyalty, in Jon Scieszka's sequel to his best-selling Frank Einstein and the Antimatter Motor: Book One, his magnetic latest, Frank Einstein and the Electro-Finger: Book Two (Amulet Books, 2015). There is plenty of fun in the wise-cracking interplay of Frank and his very different pals, human and robotic, an evil and literally power-mad arch villain, and a near down-the-tube wash-out for the good guys before virtue triumphs over greed again in the best sci fi tradition. However, the added virtue to Scieszka's series is the thorough review of physics that flows seamlessly through the plot, with funny but nifty illustrations by artist Brian Biggs to make the science theory clear to middle readers. Robot- and gizmo-loving boy readers will find this one right down their vortex.

Scieszka has major credentials as a writer with special insight into young readers, especially those of the male sort. The author of Guys Read: Funny Business, Scieszka has many award-winning works for kids, from his classic fractured fairy tales The True Story of the Three Little Pigs and The Frog Prince, Continued (Picture Puffin) through his award-winning fantasy series, The Time Warp Trio, his heavy-duty preschool series for young gearheads, Jon Scieszka's Trucktown, right down to his recent metabook book-about-books hit, It's a Book,, this is an author who is always on the cutting edge of writing for youngsters. For the further adventures of Frank Einstein, Scieszka also has a third book in this series forthcoming in the fall.