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A review by brucefarrar
Frank Einstein and the Antimatter Motor by Brian Biggs, Jon Scieszka
4.0
Frank Einstein’s attempt to make a SmartBot that is able to teach itself fails when a bolt of lightning intended to start it up, instead knocks out all the power in his Grampa Al’s garage. This causes the robot to crash to the floor from the open skylight in the roof, where Frank and his assistant Watson have raised it in hope of catching the lighting, onto the garage floor smashing it into its component parts. But, by morning when the boys wake up they discover that the networked brain that Frank installed in it, has built itself into a robot, “My name is Klink. I am a self-assembled artificial-intelligence entity.” And he has a counterpart, Klank, a mostly self-assembled artificial almost intelligence” that likes knock-knock jokes.
Scieszka has invented a goofy science fiction series to introduce concepts of basic science to his readers delightfully filled with laughs, groaners, and allusions to children’s popular culture (Captain Underpants, “Pinky and the Brain”), classic science fiction (Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics) and references that perhaps only older readers will recognize (Watson’s spot in the big science fair is 338B). To this Briggs has added his illustrations and scientific and engineering diagrams (how a toaster work, finger spelling for chimps, subatomic particles, and cow fart production).
Scieszka has invented a goofy science fiction series to introduce concepts of basic science to his readers delightfully filled with laughs, groaners, and allusions to children’s popular culture (Captain Underpants, “Pinky and the Brain”), classic science fiction (Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics) and references that perhaps only older readers will recognize (Watson’s spot in the big science fair is 338B). To this Briggs has added his illustrations and scientific and engineering diagrams (how a toaster work, finger spelling for chimps, subatomic particles, and cow fart production).