Temporarily housebound after a badly executed bungee jump, Ada uses binoculars to document the ecosystem of her new neighborhood in San Francisco. Using science and technology, third-grader Ada Lace kicks off her new series by solving a mystery even with her leg in a cast. Even the end’s domestic tranquility lasts only until Cathode spots the little box buried in the bigger one’s packing material: “TWINS!” (This book was reviewed digitally with 9-by-22-inch double-page spreads viewed at 52% of actual size.)Ī retro-futuristic romp, literally and figuratively screwy. They roll hither and thither through neatly squared-off panels and pages in infectiously comical dismay. Wiesner’s robots display his characteristic clean lines and even hues but endearingly look like vaguely anthropomorphic piles of random jet-engine parts and old vacuum cleaners loosely connected by joints of armored cable. “You’re such a good big sister!” warbles her frazzled mom. As a squad of helpline techies and bevies of neighbors bearing sludge cake and like treats roll in, the cluttered and increasingly crowded scene deteriorates into madcap chaos-until at last Cath, with help from Roomba-like robodog Sprocket, stages an intervention by whisking the hapless new arrival off to a backyard workshop for a proper assembly and software update. Robo-parents Diode and Lugnut present daughter Cathode with a new little brother-who requires, unfortunately, some assembly.Īrriving in pieces from some mechanistic version of Ikea, little Flange turns out to be a cute but complicated tyke who immediately falls apart…and then rockets uncontrollably about the room after an overconfident uncle tinkers with his basic design. This simple but effective presentation of a complicated theoretical model, the most commonly accepted explanation of the universe’s beginnings, will delight early readers and listeners with its personal connection. A glossary offers more precise definitions of the terms used. A final timeline summarizes the chronological narrative, balancing 300,000 years on the left with nearly five billion years on the right but noting that it is not done to scale. At first the “House that Jack Built” text tumbles, too, becoming more orderly as the chaos of the beginning structures itself into stars, the Earth and finally its inhabitants. The pages explode with color: vibrant oranges, yellows, pinks, purples and grayed greens. Each double-page spread is illustrated with Davis’s lively supportive graphics done with pencil, cut paper and prints and digitally composed each includes a breezy paragraph of more comprehensive explanation. In this appealing picture-book introduction to cosmology, a cumulative rhyme presents the “big bang” theory of the origin and development of the universe and the idea that humans, along with everything else, are made of star stuff.
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