The Girl and the Robot and Ellis Island

Rodriguez, Oz, and Ortega, Claribel A. The Girl and the Robot
March 25, 2025 by Disney Hyperion
E ARC Provided by Edelweiss Plus

Mimi Perez' Papi runs the E-Perez Repair shop, where he fixes small electronics for people in their Brooklyn Neighborhood. Mimi loves helping him, so when he is deported back to the Dominican Republic. She and her mother are forced to take a single room in Paco and Julia's apartment, and are still behind on their rent. In order to raise money for her father's legal fees, Mimi does repairs of her own, but she has distanced herself from her cousin and friends who form the Get Money Marketing Crew. After all, why have friends if they could suddenly be taken away? When Jada and friends Benny and Los realize that there is a robotics contest at school with a prize of $50,000, they approach Mimi to help them enter, and she is intrigued by the idea of that much money. However, strange things happen in their neighborhood. There's a huge flash of light at night, and something crashes through the roof of the E-Perez shop. After investigating, Mimi finds a robot, which she hides in her room, since federal agents, including the evil Agent Gallo, are looking for it. She manages to communicate with Dot-E, as she names the alien creature, and realizes that Dot-E's mother and father have also crashed somewhere in New York City after fleeing war on their planet. Mimi has to balance planning for the robotics competition with helping Dot-E find her parents. She finally has to loop in her friends as she ditches school to travel around to find Aa-Mee and Ee-Pa, all while trying to raise money for parts for the B-Kay Bot that the group is building. This robot will use laser technology and artificial intelligence to help people figure out what is wrong with equipment in order to repair it in a more cost efficient way than big businesses. Agent Gallo gets involved, and threatens to deport Mimi's mother unless she turns over Dot-E. Will Mimi be able to help both her own family and Dot-E's? 
Strengths: It's always good to see kids involved in robotics and STEM type projects. Having a vibrant neighborhood, and promoting this area with their B-Kay Robot, was interesting. I liked that they even though about the impact that the robot might have on a business like Mimi's father. The treatment of the Perez's situation is well done; the father doesn't want the mother to pursue his deportation case because she is lacking documents as well. At the end of the book, it is mentioned that she is working on her status, and will then work on the father's. Dot-E's situation mirrors Mimi's in easy to understand allergory.
Weaknesses: Mimi and her friends engage in some risky behaviors that I didn't like; they skip school without notifying the adults who care about them, and set off a smoke bomb in the school so they can get out unnoticed. This sets off the sprinklers, and one of them laughs. Since the sprinklers would probably have gone off in my library and ruined a lot of books, I didn't find this funny.
What I really think: This read a bit like Cartaya's Each Tiny Spark, but with alien robots, and is a good choice for readers who enjoyed Lerner's Enginerds, Slangerup's Molly and the Machine, or Winnick's HiLo series.

Feggo, Felipe Galindo and Howard, Tait (illustrator).
History Comics: Ellis Island: Immigration and the American Dream 

January 21, 2025 by First Second
E ARC provided by Netgalley

Like the other volumes in this series, Ellis Island incorporates a story to use as a framework for all of the history explanations; a boy and his mother, who works at the Ellis Island Museum, take refuge with upstairs neighbors during Superstorm Sandy in 2012. The mother's family had immigrated from Ireland in the 1800s, and the neighbors both have ties to Mexico, so have a more modern view of immigration. There is tons of information about Ellis Island, including a complete history of ownership after the land was taken from the indigenous people, and also has a lot of details about what it was like for many immigrants who arrived by boat, mainly from Europe, from the late 1800s until 1954. At that point, more people were arriving by plane, so the island center wasn't needed, and was turned into a museum. There is a bit of information about the damage that Superstorm Sandy inflicted on the historical site as well. 

This is all engagingly done, and very interesting. I even looked up the passenger lists and found what is very likely my great grandfather, Jacob Yingling, who came to the US from Germany when he was a young man. There were lots of things I didn't know, like the existence of other ports (including Angel Island on the West Coast) all around the US, and details about why some people were sent back. This is a great series, and every book I've read (including The Prohibition Era, World War II, and  Hip-Hop: The Beat of America) has had so much information; the only problem is that my students don't pick these up quite as easily as fiction graphic novels.